Direct Wing Design and Inverse Airfoil Identification with the Nonlinear Weissinger Method

TL;DR

This paper introduces a vortex-lattice method utilizing nonlinear airfoil data for efficient wing design and inverse airfoil identification, enabling rapid solutions and stability analysis.

Contribution

It presents a nonlinear vortex-lattice method that allows direct wing design and inverse airfoil identification with fast Newton-based solutions.

Findings

Effective for low-aspect ratio wings

Enables quick stability derivative calculations

Demonstrated on flying wing and wind tunnel data

Abstract

A vortex-lattice method for wing aerodynamics that uses nonlinear airfoil data is presented. Two applications of this procedure are presented: Direct Design of a Flying Wing and Inverse Identification from wind tunnel measurements with low-aspect ratio wings. A Newton method is employed, which not only allows very fast solutions to the nonlinear equations but enables the calculation of static and dynamic stability and control derivatives without further cost.