The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Airfoil design via cubic splines - Ferguson's curves revisited

Airfoil design via cubic splines - Ferguson's curves revisited
Airfoil design via cubic splines - Ferguson's curves revisited
Few aerospace design topics have had so many pages devoted to them as airfoil parameterization. Claims of novelty must therefore be made with caution in this area, so we declare our starting point simply as a fresh perspective on legacy techniques, prompted by related developments in design technology. We revisit the Ferguson spline formulation, known since the 1960s, and we propose it as a means of airfoil parameterization, it being ideally suited to implementation in commercial Computer Aided Design (CAD) engines. The development providing the impetus: off-the-shelf CAD tools are taking a widening role in the design process even at its lowest, conceptual levels. We argue that, since similarly constructed splines lie at the heart of modern CAD modeling, the most natural way to describe, say, a wing geometry is via Ferguson-style cubic splines. Further, we show that in the interest of parameterization parsimony, adequate airfoil shape control can be achieved without knots (other than those on the leading and the trailing edge), at least at the conceptual level of any design process.
1-15
Sobester, Andras
096857b0-cad6-45ae-9ae6-e66b8cc5d81b
Keane, Andy J.
26d7fa33-5415-4910-89d8-fb3620413def
Sobester, Andras
096857b0-cad6-45ae-9ae6-e66b8cc5d81b
Keane, Andy J.
26d7fa33-5415-4910-89d8-fb3620413def

Sobester, Andras and Keane, Andy J. (2007) Airfoil design via cubic splines - Ferguson's curves revisited. AIAA infotech@Aerospace 2007 Conference and Exhibit, Rohnert Park, USA. 07 - 10 May 2007. pp. 1-15 .

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Few aerospace design topics have had so many pages devoted to them as airfoil parameterization. Claims of novelty must therefore be made with caution in this area, so we declare our starting point simply as a fresh perspective on legacy techniques, prompted by related developments in design technology. We revisit the Ferguson spline formulation, known since the 1960s, and we propose it as a means of airfoil parameterization, it being ideally suited to implementation in commercial Computer Aided Design (CAD) engines. The development providing the impetus: off-the-shelf CAD tools are taking a widening role in the design process even at its lowest, conceptual levels. We argue that, since similarly constructed splines lie at the heart of modern CAD modeling, the most natural way to describe, say, a wing geometry is via Ferguson-style cubic splines. Further, we show that in the interest of parameterization parsimony, adequate airfoil shape control can be achieved without knots (other than those on the leading and the trailing edge), at least at the conceptual level of any design process.

Text
Sobe07.pdf - Author's Original
Download (13MB)

More information

Published date: 7 May 2007
Venue - Dates: AIAA infotech@Aerospace 2007 Conference and Exhibit, Rohnert Park, USA, 2007-05-07 - 2007-05-10

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 50031
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/50031
PURE UUID: a4e568b5-fbdd-42e9-aad1-c228067ddcd0
ORCID for Andras Sobester: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8997-4375
ORCID for Andy J. Keane: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-7993-1569

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 22 Jan 2008
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 03:26

Export record

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×