I don’t think anyone is calculating drag manually anmore, especially for custom airfoils.
I’d say looking at drag polars and then simulating is the way to go. @tallakt How do professionals estimate drag?
Hehe. Im a software guy. In kitemill we use numerical calculation of lift and drag relative to airflow. There is a software called xfoil that does a decent job at it I believe. I have not been involved in this though
Xfoil from Mark drela, original version up to something like 1980’s is still the best open tool available.
Also airfoil tool that compute many calculation performed on Xfoil is really useful.
Btw: yes by pure luck I’m a paid professional in this business. That doesnt necessarily mean that I know a lot of stuff. I think the biggest differene between me now and me a while ago, before I started in my current job is that now I have seen Kitemills rig inflight many times. This has adjusted my views on what is important and not. But there has not been sudden insight dealt to me. Anyone could make a better guess than me in most issues AWE…
It would be wonderful to be able to rely on computers to design fluid structure interaction systems for us
Even with the best of machine learning
I fear It’s still going to take a huge amount video of laser lit flying in fog (and wind) to get any useful output
Nice clean explainer video of the techniques being explored
Another video in the same series is much more encouraging in terms of how much data you may need to start with to actively develop a good working control model from
If you have a decent machine, any reasonable airfoil should suffice to achieve reasonable performance. This is one more case of trying to overthink everything, rather than just getting something working. If you don’t have something that works in the first place, there is no point trying to optimize such minor details. What’s holding back AWE is not the lack of good enough airfoils. In many cases, too “good” of an airfoil will negatively affect performance. If it looks like an airfoil, flies like an airfoil, and quacks like an airfoil, it will work.