Aircraft Design Software and tools

overscan (PaulMM)

overscan (PaulMM)

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Anyone played around with RDSWin?


RDSwin-Student was developed with one purpose in mind - to let students quickly do the mundane analysis tasks so that they can focus upon learning the art and science of aircraft design. In too many engineering colleges, the senior design class becomes an exercise in analysis with a few days spent making a drawing (and for all the wrong reasons), then 95% of the semester spent trying to analyze it. In the end, it rarely performs the given mission so the students learn how to lie using numbers, and they don't have the time to learn how to design.

RDSwin-Student is a Windows-based aircraft design and analysis tool that combines initial layout design, analysis of aerodynamics, propulsion, and weights, sizing to a mission profile, and calculation of performance and cost. RDSwin-Student simplifies the analysis required to perform trade studies and carpet plot optimization but - deliberately - requires the students to define the parametric changes, rerun the analyses, and plot the results as a learning experience. It has a powerful built-in CAD module allowing rapid layout of a new design concept. Aircraft components such as wings, tails, fuselages, and engines can be quickly created and assembled, then analyzed for the geometric parameters required for analysis (wetted area, lengths, etc...).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AIAA Fellow Daniel Raymer is a world-renowned expert in aerospace vehicle design and author of the best-selling textbook Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach. President of Conceptual Research Corporation, he received the 2010 AIAA Aircraft Design Award, the AIAA Summerfield Book Award, the Rockwell Engineer of the Year Award, and the Purdue University Outstanding Aerospace Engineer Award. He received B.S. and M.S. engineering degrees in Astronautics and Aeronautics from Purdue, an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California, and a Doctorate of Engineering (Ph.D.) from the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology.
 
So many books! So many software! So little time.
I cannot do them all, that is a crime
So instead I will make do with a silly ditty of a rhyme.

I may finally have found a reason to become a member of AIAA
I just have to figure out how much I am willing to pay
with hopes that my wife will have nothing to say.

It's beer/bier/biere day here!
 
I have not played with it, but I can say that Raymer literally wrote the book on it. His textbook on aircraft design is pretty much standard reference for preliminary design.
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
Anyone played around with RDSWin?


RDSwin-Student was developed with one purpose in mind - to let students quickly do the mundane analysis tasks so that they can focus upon learning the art and science of aircraft design. In too many engineering colleges, the senior design class becomes an exercise in analysis with a few days spent making a drawing (and for all the wrong reasons), then 95% of the semester spent trying to analyze it. In the end, it rarely performs the given mission so the students learn how to lie using numbers, and they don't have the time to learn how to design.

RDSwin-Student is a Windows-based aircraft design and analysis tool that combines initial layout design, analysis of aerodynamics, propulsion, and weights, sizing to a mission profile, and calculation of performance and cost. RDSwin-Student simplifies the analysis required to perform trade studies and carpet plot optimization but - deliberately - requires the students to define the parametric changes, rerun the analyses, and plot the results as a learning experience. It has a powerful built-in CAD module allowing rapid layout of a new design concept. Aircraft components such as wings, tails, fuselages, and engines can be quickly created and assembled, then analyzed for the geometric parameters required for analysis (wetted area, lengths, etc...).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AIAA Fellow Daniel Raymer is a world-renowned expert in aerospace vehicle design and author of the best-selling textbook Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach. President of Conceptual Research Corporation, he received the 2010 AIAA Aircraft Design Award, the AIAA Summerfield Book Award, the Rockwell Engineer of the Year Award, and the Purdue University Outstanding Aerospace Engineer Award. He received B.S. and M.S. engineering degrees in Astronautics and Aeronautics from Purdue, an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California, and a Doctorate of Engineering (Ph.D.) from the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology.
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Might be helpful for anyone who wants to jumpstart into RDSWin really quick ;)

View: https://youtu.be/jUpwrTTOTe0
 
When it comes to CFD, OpenFOAM seems to be the freeware standard setter:

openfoam.org

OpenFOAM | Free CFD Software | The OpenFOAM Foundation

OpenFOAM is the leading free, open source software for computational fluid dynamics (CFD), owned by the OpenFOAM Foundation and distributed exclusively open source under the General Public Licence. OpenFOAM is produced by the core maintenance team at CFD Direct.
openfoam.org openfoam.org

In the FEA arena, there are lots of apparently very capable academic standalone programs, so perhaps it's appropriate to just link to (tiny sigh) Wikipedia's "List of finite element software packages":

List of finite element software packages - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

For a hobbyist or an enthusiast it is debatable whether these tools are in fact useful, certainly in the early phase of developing an idea getting lost in detailed analytics can be self-defeating ("GIGO"). Also, my impression is that CFD and FEA software require a lot of effort and prior knowledge, I'd love to be proven wrong on this though. Certainly there are services like Simscale that attempt to simplify and streamline the analytical process but those tend to incur costs sooner than later (if not from the start).
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
Anyone played around with RDSWin?
Click to expand...
My experience was that it had a very heavy learning curve to get to grips with the software.

It felt a bit detailed and time intensive for first pass concept design but probably more usually when you have a workable configuration and some better definition.
 
Never used RDS, but this being a Raymer code, it probably helps if you read his textbook first. I'm guessing knowing the methodology and nomenclature helps figuring out what input is needed to run the code. This is based on the assumption that RDS is just his textbook method in automated form... :p
 
AeroFranz said:
Never used RDS, but this being a Raymer code, it probably helps if you read his textbook first. I'm guessing knowing the methodology and nomenclature helps figuring out what input is needed to run the code. This is based on the assumption that RDS is just his textbook method in automated form... :p
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I found it easier to put the methods in his textbook into my own models. But then i'm not trying to do the same thing.
 
sienar said:
OpenVSP is free, pretty fun to mess with an is made/supported by NASA. They have a decent set of intro videos on how to use it.
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Can confirm. OpenVSP doesn't have sizing methods (it's just not within the scope of the tool), but it's a pretty nice/user friendly/free CAD tool that can help with a lot of the necessary tasks. They recently added a first-order drag model that extracts the geometry from the CAD file. They keep improving the analysis tools, and there's a Vortex-lattice code that is slowly getting better (it takes time for the developpers, who are largely volunteers, to fix bugs).
Not to beat a dead horse, but i'll re-iterate that having a basic knowledge of how sizing methods work helps a lot. Alternatively, or rather in addition to, i would definitely watch the Youtube tutorials that @red admiral mentioned.
 
Hi,

red admiral said:
My experience was that it had a very heavy learning curve to get to grips with the software.
Click to expand...

The user interface is not really self-explanatory, to put it mildly. I gave the software a try out of idle curiosity, but lacking the kind of determined motivation that results from having a real application for the software, I put it aside without results after a while.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)
 
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I once bought a software called AirplanePDQ that combined a CAD program with with other aircraft estimating tools. It was pretty easy to use and seemed to give what seemed like reasonable results (as far as I could tell). Unfortunately, I don't think its supported any more and I have misplaced my install disk and installation key :(
 
For those who are venturing into small-scale airplane building, the following database has been quite useful. During my time as one of the engineers of nascent (i.e. recovering from neglect) UCLA DBF, we obtained our airfoil data from this.

Airfoil Tools

Airfoil (aerofoil) tools and applications. Search for airfoil coordinates and dat files. Plot and comapare airfoil shapes
airfoiltools.com airfoiltools.com

For ease of manufacturing, not much can beat good old Clark Y with its flat lower surface and reasonably workable coefficients and range of Reynolds numbers.

I haven’t had the chance to mess around with the Raymer tool yet.
 
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There isn't much plotted points to do a correct and smooth surface usable in most CAD process.
For example, I use my own suite to pump curves into CAD and most have at least 1000 coordinates references.
The 100 or so point that are offered online are only good for small wing dimensions like scale modeling.
Be aware that you'd need something more professional.
 
Correct, but i think it's okay to interpolate points in between. As a matter of fact, in tools like XFOIL, increasing the number of points is one of the first things you do (command PPANE? PPAR? it's been a while...).
 
AeroFranz said:
Correct, but i think it's okay to interpolate points in between. As a matter of fact, in tools like XFOIL, increasing the number of points is one of the first things you do (command PPANE? PPAR? it's been a while...).
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If you use XFLR for that (I believe XFOIL sits behind XFLR) - this is quite straightforward but a bit of 'Inverse Design' is usually required to get the Cl/Cd plots something like.
 
TomcatViP said:
There isn't much plotted points to do a correct and smooth surface usable in most CAD process.
For example, I use my own suite to pump curves into CAD and most have at least 1000 coordinates references.
The 100 or so point that are offered online are only good for small wing dimensions like scale modeling.
Be aware that you'd need something more professional.
Click to expand...
This is not fully accurate. Having more points that may have round off error can actually cause more issues. The areas where you need higher number of points is where the rate change in curvature is high such as the leading edge. As you get further aft, having too many points can tend to cause issues, unless you are doing an equation driven curve where there is no truncation or roundoff errors. Throwing curvature combs on the finished spline can give you a good indication of issues due to too many points and which points you may want to remove. If the airfoil has an equation to derive it, then that is the most useful for creating accurate airfoils with a minimum of artificial inflection points.
 
It's obviously equation driven. I am referring to naca airfoil for meters long chord (the ones that you'd need for General aviation).
If the inputs plot database is unreliable, yes I guess that you can have curvature errors. At least.

;)
 
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TomcatViP said:
It's obviously equation driven. I am referring to naca airfoil for meters long chord (the ones that you'd need for General aviation).
If the inputs plot database is unreliable, yes I guess that you can have curvature errors. At least.

;)
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Not all airfoils have a specific equation that derives them. Some though are specifically driven through a parametric equation such as the NACA 4 digit series. In my experience, most databases with 100 points are sufficient, particularly if they have more points in the front of the airfoil up to say about 3-5% chord. Aft of that any more points is actually likely to drive more errors than it solves. I have seen this even propagate into issues with CFD efforts due to surface perturbations in splines being overconstrained and causing issues in 3D.

There can be some caveats to this for very large airfoils where the interpolation is in excess of the manufacturing tolerances. If you were to allow a .1% normalized error on the airfoil thickness at any particular location, for a 12% thick airfoil that was 60" long, this would result in a max deviation of .0072". This is generally much lower than manufacturing processes can achieve for this type of airfoil. Surface profiles of .050" or higher would be common for a feature like this. Distortions due to loading will be higher. It would take an airfoil to be 416" (roughly 10m) to breach this profile limit, though most will generally be concerned with waviness over the line profile of the section for manufacturing.

In more modern, inversely design airfoils, the ability to add too many points frequently causes issues for manufacturing, showing up as chatter and cusps as it causes the machining center to accelerate and decelerate in short areas. There typically is a lot of effort that is spent on cleaning this up.
 
I found this:
github.com

GitHub - peterdsharpe/AeroSandbox: Aircraft design optimization made fast through computational graph transformations (e.g., automatic differentiation). Composable analysis tools for aerodynamics, propulsion, structures, trajectory design, and much m

Aircraft design optimization made fast through computational graph transformations (e.g., automatic differentiation). Composable analysis tools for aerodynamics, propulsion, structures, trajectory ...
github.com github.com
Some kind of design software with a lot of functionality built in. Anyone wants to check it out and report back?
 
For the drone crowd

A large dataset to train machine learning models for aerial vehicle design​

techxplore.com

A large dataset to train machine learning models for aerial vehicle design

Designing reliable aircraft can be both challenging and time-consuming, as it often entails several steps and analyses. Deep learning models could potentially help to speed up aircraft design and deployment, helping developers to identify the most promising solutions or potential flaws with a...
techxplore.com techxplore.com

AircraftVerse: A Large-Scale Multimodal Dataset of Aerial Vehicle Designs

Dataset accompanying code and paper: AircraftVerse: A Large-Scale Multimodal Dataset of Aerial Vehicle Designs We present AircraftVerse, a publicly available aerial vehicle design dataset. AircraftVerse contains 27,714 diverse battery powered aircraft designs that have been evaluated using...
zenodo.org zenodo.org
github.com

GitHub - SRI-CSL/AircraftVerse

Contribute to SRI-CSL/AircraftVerse development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
 
In addition to AVIARY there is a program reported by phys.org called "deepSPACE" that looks to be developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Jordan Smart and Emilio Botero for the AIAA AVIATION FORUM AND ASCEND 2024.

This reminds me of the TED TALK on Unilever nozzles

There is another article called "Boneyard aircraft sees new life" at phys.org...the cockpit of a plane used as a flight sim for X-66.
 
Hey everyone,

What would be a good software program for determining conical camber for a given wing profile?
 

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