Hi, Tim--
My ears perk up here. First, I confess ignorance. Are boat keels based on
NACA foils, and do they apply to water, as opposed to air? Perhaps there was
a series of NACA foils intended for water? I just never paid attention to
that part of things, although I studied NACA airfoils for my own purposes
many years ago. I vaguely recall a factor called Reynolds Number that would
govern foils in various media, such as air and water. Can you elaborate?
Regards,
Dave S.
PS--I was just a layman studying the foils at the time, but I went through
them all pretty carefully. It seemed to me that they were kind of empircal
in nature. I got the impression that the great virtue of a NACA foil, for an
aircraft designer of the 1930s or 1940s, was that it was thoroughly tested
and predictable. However, it seemed as though a lot of developments of later
decades, such as the Clark-Y, not to mention variable sweeps and tapers,
variable chords and foils in a given wing, etc., began to favor departures
from the NACA foils (except when mere predictability was the goal, as in
vertical stabilizer foils). So, although I later got into aviation writing
and was constantly looking for NACA foils, I didn't find many in the wings
of light aircraft. In my time, we saw NASA come out with the GAW-1, and I
have always assumed that later, composite aircraft designers were free to
work with an infinitely variable foil in mind.
On 3/16/08 8:40 PM, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>> but they also value every advantage they can get.
>
> key words^, huh?
>
> nice explanation, Chris.
>
> So I guess Compu-Keel is still around?
>
> http://www.compukeel.com/
>
> odd because you get NACA foil specs on-line for free...but I guess all class
> legal keels cant be derived from NACA sections.
>
> tf
>
>
>
