Wbrussow wrote: ↑Tue Nov 10, 2020 7:45 am
This is such an interesting thread for me, considering I am new to foiling and come from an aerospace background.I was wondering if your design tool can be used for tailless wings, and reflexed airfoils, and no/little sweep. It would be awesome to not have to build a fuselage or rear wing. And I am hoping that during pumping at low speed, not having a rear wing on a long moment arm will result in less drag during the wild AoA oscilations.
Hi, yes some wings with reflex are included in the optimisation program. However, for optimisation I am mostly concerned with lift, drag and AOA so that is the only data I handle and save. Optimising for minimum drag over a certain operating envelope.
However, for a monofoil you might care more about your pitching moment and other parameters for stability and accept less than ideal drag. I remember one guy on the Monofoil thread made 2 identical wings one with reflex and one without, I think he preffered the one with reflex for monofoiling, but I can't remember it that clearly. For playing around theoretically, you can always download Xfoil and it will analyse any profile you ask it to analyse and show all the data, but this is not something I am planning to include for optimisation purposes. Happy to run optimisation calcs for a traditional front wing for you and then you can plug it into Xfoil and play with it, add reflex etc...
I rode monofoil for a few months to make my mind up about it, but I am now quite happy with small fast stabs being proffered in my case. I think a lot of work will be needed to make a well balanced monofoil, the problem is not that it is difficult to ride (one gets used to it), the irritating thing for me was the amount of weight shift needed when changing riding speed. Had to keep on moving my feet backward when going faster and forwards when going slower. A well balanced stab does this work by creating a countermoment to try and cancel out the rotating moment that drag is trying to cause as speed increases. So I'm quite happy with a small and fast stab, tuned to give very similar balance across the speed range of the wing. And stabs actually lift when at low speeds (higher angle of attack) so their area is helping to add to the lift of the front wing at low speeds. It is a common misconception that all stabs always push down, but that is not the case, it pushes up at low speeds and transitions to pushing down as speeds increase.
Another thing is pumping needs you to put in a lot of effort and a more stable platform does help. I don't think it will be a easy task to learn to vigorously push with the legs while still maintaining good balance on a monofoil, but nothing is impossible. I would suggest learning on a setup know to pump well and then experiment from there. As mentioned, learning to dock start is not easy, one needs all the help one can get.
