I am a beginner on XFOIL. I try to obtain the drag polar for a flat plate airfoil. But the XFOIL program just shuts down by itself when the AOA reaches to 26 degrees. Does it mean the airfoil stalls at 26 degrees? Can I get the drag polar after the stall?
Hello Mr. Chen,
We use extensively XFOIL in our Department of Aeronautics in the Technical University of Sofia. It is a very stable computer program so my suggestion is that there is a "floating point" CPU error or some memory issue.
Theoretically you can rotate any airfoil with 360 degrees (form -179.99 to +179.99 degrees), which of course includes beyond stall operation.
Can you try to install it on another computer with a different CPU and RAM configuration. Also with another Windows.
Some older computer programs crash easily on newer window/OS, when they are run in compatible mode as they are restricted in their floating point and RAM allowances (especially programs, which were coded to use the CPU functions of Pentium3/4/dual-core processor and then the same program is started on a modern i3/i5/i7 or a quad-core with MultiThreading).
You can write me an email on [email protected] or [email protected] and I can send you our XFOIL installation file so that you can try it on multiple computers. I hope that this might help you.
DISCLAIMER: I do not offer to illegally handle a copy of the XFOIL computer program from our institution to another institution/person but rather help a scientist to verify whether it is a compatible issue with its software on his computer. I do this in the name of science and in the spirit of free cooperation between scientists, which was the original idea behind the WWW.
Warm regards,
Filip Panayotov
Assistant Prof. in
Aerodynamics and Flight Dynamics
@ Technical University of Sofia
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Physical Sciences
- Materials Science
- Plating