PyFoil81: Rotorcraft Design Tool Airfoil Table Generator

The Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology (RVLT) Program is exploring an open design space for novel VTOL aircraft configurations. Highly efficient and lightweight electric motors paired with the increasing energy density of batteries are enabling new aircraft concepts such as Distributed Electric Propulsion and eVTOL, which exploit new technologies’ advantages to improve existing missions and enable whole new missions such as Urban Air Mobility. Flight for eVTOLs creates new analytical challenges: rotors are designed with small chord and diameter as well as unconventional twist profiles, and with wider operational RPM and advance ratio ranges, can have larger regions of reversed flow. To meet this departure from traditional rotor aerodynamics in context of the high impact of aeropropulsive efficiency on mission capability, M4 proposes a lightweight Python software, PyFoil81, capable of efficiently analyzing and tabulating airfoil data from a variety of flow regimes. It will efficiently handle user inputs, airfoil rediscretization and modification, API to/from multiple aero solvers, and a data blending tool to create composite C81 airfoil data tables from various data sources.