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Free Software for Aeronautics

This post presents some interresting tools for aeronautic studies.

Propeller

PROP_DESIGN

website: https://propdesign.jimdofree.com/
PROP_DESIGN is open source, public domain, aircraft propeller design software. Although intended for traditional aircraft propellers, PROP_DESIGN supports:

  • Axial Flow Fans
  • Counter-rotating Propellers
  • Electric Ducted Fans - EDFs
  • Geared Turbofans - GTFs
  • Open Rotors
  • Propfans
  • Turbofans (both Rotors and Stators)
  • Ultra-High Bypass Engines - UHBs
  • Unducted Fans - UDFs

CCBlade

website: https://github.com/byuflowlab/CCBlade.jl
CCBlade is a Julia software using the blade element momentum method for propellers and turbines.

CRotor

website: http://www.esotec.org/sw/crotor.html
CRotor is the continuity of Xrotor. It is opensource.

DFDC Ducted Fan Design Code v070-ES3.3

website: http://www.esotec.org/sw/DFDC.html#download
This is a consolidated version of the DFDC v0.70. It remains an unfinished version but it is robust enough for usage.

ESPROP

website: http://www.esotec.org/sw/esprop.html
The system has two chief applications:

  1. The propeller designer seeking to directly compare competing designs over a wide range of operating conditions.
  2. The propeller manufacturer (or buyer) seeking to select the optimum existing blade for a specific application.

ESPROP databases can be built from any blade geometry that has been loaded into XROTOR, over any range of operating parameters for which XROTOR will converge solutions.

XRotor

website: http://web.mit.edu/drela/Public/web/xrotor/
XROTOR is an interactive program for the design and analysis of ducted and free-tip propellers and windmills.
XROTOR is quite hold (last update 2011). But it remains a reference.

DFDC Ducted Fan Design Code - Whirlwind

website: http://web.mit.edu/drela/Public/web/dfdc/
DFDC performs simulation for Ducted fan design, including bloackag/loss and thrust/pwer prediction. The project is unfinished.
DFDC is a command line tool. Whirlwind is graphic interface but not all functionalities are available. Both are quite hold (last update 2005).

Qprop

website: http://web.mit.edu/drela/Public/web/qprop/
QPROP is an analysis program for predicting the performance of propeller-motor or windmill-generator combinations. QMIL is a companion propeller/windmill design program.

Aerodynamic

Flow5

website: https://flow5.tech/
This is the continuity of the XFLR5 project. It is a potential flow solver with built-in pre- and post processing functionalities. Its purpose is to make preliminary designs of wings, planes and sails reliable, fast and user-friendly.

XFLR5

website: http://www.xflr5.tech/xflr5.htm
XFLR5 is an analysis tool for airfoils, wings and planes operating at low Reynolds Numbers. It includes:

  • XFoil’s Direct and Inverse analysis capabilities
  • Wing design and analysis capabilities based on the Lifiting Line Theory, on the Vortex Lattice Method, and on a 3D Panel Method

OpenVSP

website: http://openvsp.org/
OpenVSP is a parametric aircraft geometry tool. OpenVSP allows the user to create a 3D model of an aircraft defined by common engineering parameters. This model can be processed into formats suitable for engineering analysis. The predecessors to OpenVSP have been developed by J.R. Gloudemans and others for NASA since the early 1990’s. On January 10 2012, OpenVSP was released as an open source project under the NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) version 1.3.

Other

SUAVE

website: https://suave.stanford.edu/
SUAVE is a conceptual level aircraft design environment built with the ability to analyze and optimize both conventional and unconventional designs. This capability is achieved in part by allowing analysis information for aircraft to be drawn from multiple sources. Many other software tools for aircraft conceptual design rely on fixed empirical correlations and other handbook approximation. SUAVE instead provides a framework that can be used to design aircraft featuring advanced technologies by augmenting relevant correlations with physics-based methods.