C180 Airfoil

jnmeade

jnmeade

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Jim Meade
I'm looking for some information on what is described as a European C180 air foil (no, nothing to do with the Piper airplane).
I've had no luck searching online. Does anyone have a suggestions on where to seek more information on this airfoil?
 
Perhaps NASA - aeronautics is their second name. Try searching google books.
 
I'd already tried airfoiltools and ignored NASA as I knew it was a European design. I had not read that it was proprietary. Even if it is proprietary, does that mean it is not in a European data base? Thanks to all for the suggestions.
 
Back in the olden days, a big name organization like NACA would design airfoils, do the wind tunnel testing, and make data available for people who design airplanes.
Now, anyone with a computer can design and simulate their own airfoil and customize it to the target speed / load ranges for a particular aircraft and never publish the foil data or have it put in a data base. Many just claim that the foil is proprietary, but if you have access to an actual aircraft, it's not that hard to reverse engineer.
 
jnmeade said:
I'm looking for some information on what is described as a European C180 air foil (no, nothing to do with the Piper airplane).
I've had no luck searching online. Does anyone have a suggestions on where to seek more information on this airfoil?
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Royal Aeronautical Society, 4 Hamilton Place, London, UK.
 
I found this quote in a published paper Investigations on stability and control characteristics of a CS-VLA certified aircraft using wind tunnel test data at https://www.researchgate.net/public...ertified_aircraft_using_wind_tunnel_test_data.

The wing uses two airfoils, in which the outer wing airfoil (FD14-142) features a ‘‘drooped nose’’ and is designed to allow for a higher than maximum lift coefficient to improve the stall behavior of the aircraft. The inboard wing up to the aileron makes use of a FD14-144 airfoil section. Both airfoils are derivatives from the proven airfoil C180 used on the CT aircraft series.
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One of the references (#21) is a link to the Flight Design website and was last downloaded in 2015, but when I tried it I got a "404" from the Flight Design website, so the link is broken. Searches for "airfoil FD14-144" wound up back at the researchgate article. :(
 
Thanks very much for this information. I'll see if I can follow up on it. I see the discussion of the wing in question in the article says it is a derivative of the C180. The C180 wing on my aircraft has a stall strip on the inboard end of the wing and is straight with no drooped nose.
 
If one were to disclose what one intended to do with the data, then perchance, others might be able to make suggestions relevant to the intended objective.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Many just claim that the foil is proprietary, but if you have access to an actual aircraft, it's not that hard to reverse engineer.
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:yeahthat:
That's true, and not too difficult to do. I can't help but wonder, though, why some manufacturers have no problem identifying the airfoil used in the wing, vertical and horizontal stabilizers, rudder and elevator, while others keep it a big secret. Heck, aircraft manufacturers whose products are available both as kits (plans only, kits, quick build kits) and as turn-key ready-to-fly airplanes often provide full size rib templates for wings and control surfaces.
 
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