Making a Wooden Airplane: Will Airfoils Help?

[eaboujaoudeh]

During unviversity we had a project to make a piece a wooden airplane driven by an electrical motor, it was a difficult but lovely experience, in such a limited time and resources that we were bounded with. My question is that would u think that using airfoils instead of flat wings would create a huge difference at low speeds?

 

[Danger]

You didn't mention what scale this was on, or what sort of motor was involved, so I'm going to assume that it was a balsa construction of less than 20" in length with maybe a 24" wingspan. If that's the case, I don't believe that an airfoil shape would make much difference. Your angle of attack and total wing area would probably be the deciding factors for performance. Best let Fred, Russ, Rainman Aero, Andre and the other experts weigh in before taking my word for it.

 

[Mentz114]

My own experience dictates that there should be plenty of dihedral on the wings to enhance stability.

 

[russ_watters]

If you are just using flat balsa sheets, camber actually does make quite a bit of difference.

 

[eaboujaoudeh]

yes balsa wood and definitely smaller than 24'' by a large bit, but i think i should enlarge wings. and the downside of the whole project was that the teacher challenged us with a large electrical engine with a lot of vibrations, i perfected the prop till the vibrations became very small in size, but still have an effect. so i guess i'll make the camber...thnx guys