Talk:Airfoil

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[edit] Discussion

I like this topic. let's discuss it!

OK. I've done a number of things on sailboats and sailing, and I generally use the term "foil" since they have both air foils (the sails) and water foils (centerboard, keel, rudder, etc.). I'm thinking of renaming the article "foil (aerodynamics)" or the like, and pointing the "airfoil" entry at that. I might also create some sections on simple foil designs, such as the NACA foils (the 00xx, for example, are widely used in boats) and the Extra section foils (also used in boats). scot 17:02, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't want to sound like an aeroshauvinist but no one will look it up as anything but airfoil or aerofoil. There are dozens of links to here as it is. Calling it "foil (aerodynamics)" wouldn't help. Please don't move it. There are sail and centerboard articles that need work and linking. This one too will be a good long article when we get to expanding it from the stub that it now is. Meggar 20:38, 2005 July 12 (UTC)

The problem with calling it "airfoil" is that an airfoil is a specialized case, a foil designed to work in air. Yes, almost everyone will come looking for "airfoil", unless they came from a boat article, but having a redirect or stub from "airfoil" and "aerofoil" directing them to "foil" for the technical description would still get them what they need quickly. With boating articles, the reader is directed to the "foil" disambiguation page, where they have to dig through and find that for information on lifting foils under water, they are directed to the "airfoil" page (unfortunately, what should be the correct term for a water based foil, "hydrofoil", has been hijacked in English to cover a couple of classes of powerboats). A generic foil article could cover foils in general, and then point out the differences in Reynolds numbers that split foils into two fuzzy groups, air and water foils. All appropriate terms such as, airfoil, aerofoil, hydrofoil, lifting foil, etc. could all direct to the common page (and maybe "lifting foil" would be a better name?). Ideally the article for lifting foils would be just "foil", since all other foil entries have some obviously applicable modifier.

Tabling the issue of names, what sort of stuff should go in a generic lifting foil article? I can put some stuff together about NACA sections, especially the 00xx symmetric foils, as those are often encountered in sailboats, both the underwater lifting surfaces and rigid wing sails. I've also run across formulas for other NACA foil shapes (the 4xxx series in particular), and a section used for thin symmetric foils called the Extra section, that is an elliptical leading edge and a wedge trailing edge. I even have a copy of XFoil handy that I could used to generate some screenshots of pressure distributions across different foils. scot 21:25, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Try to concider how it will work in the future when all the articles have grown much larger. Anyway, my vote is not to merge or rename. Now the {{mergeto}} and {{mergefrom}} notices should be placed in the articles to be effected to get other opinions. Meggar 07:01, 2005 July 14 (UTC)

Hi. Partly since I'm interested in biomechanics, I feel scot's "Re-related topics" or medium-dependent topics ought to be covered somewhere. Also, I think the situation is a bit similar to that of propeller, which also is wing-related matter, and has both aero- and hydro- usage. Cavitation might also have a relationship.

By the way, if a general name is needed, what about Wing section? This doesn't have ambiguity as foil, nor aero-PoV. However, I don't know at all how common is this term... (well, I have a book named "Theory of Wing Sections", but I'm not so sure... it's old-fashioned maybe?) Is lifting foil better? Hmm... I can't judge. .

Anyway, I feel we should keep this article at least, and then creating "lifting foil" or "wing section" or like that for general explanation. Do I miss the point? - Marsian / talk 09:34, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

I think "wing section" is a bit less general, since it implies "wings" which implies "aircraft". In fact, not all airfiols are used for generating lift; a fat NACA 00xx foil is perfect for, say, a landing gear support on a fixed gear airplane. The NACA foil provides far less drag than a cylinder of the same thickness, since its purpose is to prevent flow separation; the lift it generates is really a byproduct of being able to operate at high angles of attack because it doesn't stall easily. Of course, that argument goes against the term "lifting foil" as well...

I definately agree that there needs to be an article for "airfoil" since that is the most common use of foils. Since the "how" discussion of foils is really a case of applied fluid mechanics, maybe the technical article could just be "foil (fluid mechanics)"? That seems to be perfect for discussions of Reynolds numbers, boundary layers, turbulent and laminar flows, etc. Sections within the article could cover symmetric foils, supersonic foils, lifting bodies, and anything else related to forms that decrease drag and/or increase lift. scot 15:55, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

I see. And your solution seems good, except one thing. There remains the possibility of "foil (fluid dynamics)". I myself do not care whichever the name will be, but some could argue this point... It might be better to ask the members of WikiProject Fluid dynamics and/or drop a notice at Talk:Fluid mechanics... But well, I'm too anxious maybe. After all, the name can be changed in the future so you don't have to care much. - Marsian / talk 02:32, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

The Wikipedia "fluid dynamics" article redirects to "fluid mechanics"; I'd have used dynamics, too, but picked mechanics since that's what the relevant article was named. I'll create a "foil (fluid mechanics)" page so development can start. scot 13:57, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Glauert Integral

Is it just the first term (1+cos(z))/sin(z)) or the whole Fourier series solution??? Bob aka Linuxlad 22:07, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merger of aerofoil into airfoil

I propose to merge the aerofoil article into here (i.e. airfoil), since both articles are to large extend the same, the fundamental difference being the American spelling "airfoil" and the British variant "aerofoil". Although the WP policy is to retain the variants of English spelling, see WP:ENGVAR, I do not think it is manageable to have two identical versions of the same article, one in each spelling. That is also apparent from the five-year history of the "airfoil" and "aerofoil" articles, where most changes are being made to the "airfoil" article, and hardly any to the "aerofoil" article. Because all the changes are here (in "airfoil"), I propose to keep this article, and convert the "aerofoil" page into a redirect, and to make due reference to differences in spelling in the merged article. -- Crowsnest (talk) 10:28, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Done. This is non-controversial; WP:ENGVAR actually specifies to retain the first variant of the English spelling that is used; i.e. in this case airfoil. It seems that "airfoil" is a lot more common online as well than "aerofoil", which is a shame because the latter is what I've always used. Anyhow, I've merged the articles. BigBlueFish (talk) 21:48, 9 June 2008 (UTC)