Shopfoil: Design of Unoptimized Airfoils Available to Purchase

The desire and demand to fly farther and faster has progressively integrated the concept of optimization with airfoil design resulting in increasingly complex numerical tools pursuing efficiency often at diminishing returns, while the costs and difficulty associated with fabrication increases with design complexity. This paper establishes a method utilizing numerical tools for unoptimized design, focused on reducing the complexity of airfoils for applications where aerodynamic performance is less important than the efficiency of manufacturing. We applied this method to the development of a low Re, disposable Hybrid Projectile requiring a 4.5:1 glide ratio, resulting in a series of airfoils which are geometric approximations to highly contoured cross-sections called ShopFoils. This series of airfoils both numerically and experimentally perform within a 10% marigin of the SD6060 at low Re while reducing manufacturing costs and meeting the requirements of the HP platform.