Digital Wind Tunnel

Practical Stability Analysis

Since 1994 AeroLogic has been developing and refining PSW (Personal Simulation Works). From the outset our goal has been to make Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools and techniques available to aircraft and ship designers who have limited budgets and personal computers (including laptops) of average power.

In general a CFD analysis is a three-step process:

Model building - Loftsman/P (geometric representation and boundary condition specification)

Numerical solution - Cmarc (3D CFD using a low-order panel method)

Interpretation of results - Postmarc (graphical and/or tabular representation of output)

A fourth step for aeronautical applications involves repeatedly executing the Cmarc analysis while varying several parameters, including yaw and pitch angles and control surface deflections. This procedure is conducted by DWT (Digital Wind Tunnel), which we offer as an option because it is not needed by boat and surface-vehicle designers.

The following discussion concerns what this powerful analytical tool does and how it does it.

Chapter 1 A Windows executive utilizing the Cmarc kernel

Chapter 2 Longitudinal Stability (fixed stick)

Chapter 3 Yaw Stability (fixed stick)

Chapter 4 DWT Run Management

Chapter 5 Dynamic Evaluation

Chapter 6 Correlation (Navion)

Chapter 7 Effect of CG on Longitudinal Stability