Airfoil Optimizer is a tool for selecting a near optimum airfoil for your aircraft design. Thousands of airfoils have been developed since before the Wright brother's first sustained, powered flight in 1903 at Kill Devil Hills. Buried in those are probably some that are quite well suited for your design application. Unfortunately, aerodynamic performance data on existing airfoils are often difficult to obtain and can boil down to educated guesswork. Airfoil Optimizer solves this problem by bringing together a comprehensive performance database and a tool for sorting through this database and matching the predicted performance against the flight requirements for your design.

Overview
Airfoil Optimizer includes 4 primary screens and worksheets.

1] Properties Screen - enables you to specify the parameters for your aircraft. Enter the aircraft's weight, wing area, and flight speeds. This information is used to help you select a well-matched airfoil profile.

2] Airfoil Selector Screen - a trade-off chart and list of airfoils from which you may want to choose. On this screen you can select the two most important features for the airfoil you want. For example, low minimum drag, low cruise drag, maximum lift, low moment, etc... You select two of these features or metrics and the software will display a chart showing which of the airfoils in the database provide the best combinations of these features.

3] Performance Comparison Screen - enables you to estimate the changes in performance that would occur if you switched between any two airfoils in the database. The changes in stall speed and cruise speed are shown as well as the changes in power required and rate of climb available at various flight speeds.

4] Airfoil Polar Viewer - displays aerodynamic data on the various airfoils and can be used to page through data quickly and compare the features of the various airfoils under consideration.

Airfoil Optimizer can be used for propeller-driven and jet aircraft as well as un-powered gliders and sailplanes. The database contains 330 airfoil sections that were chosen based on their performance and popularity. Airfoil Optimizer is a companion for Airplane PDQ. Geometries and polars can be exported for use with Airplane PDQ.

Software Requirements
The software requires Windows 95/98/NT 4.0/2000/Me/XP, and requires 20 MB of disk space including approximately 10 MB on the system drive. 32-64 MB of RAM is recommended.