A Fast Aerodynamic Tool for Preliminary Aircraft Design

A simple and rapid tool for calculating the aerodynamic characteristics of almost arbitrary wing configurations with sufficient accuracy for preliminary design is presented. The main emphasis is put on simple validation examples for subsonic and transonic cruise flight cases. An approach for polar transformation to consider transonic effects of swept wings is investigated in detail. 3D RANS computations have been performed in order to compare the results. This paper has been issued as a basis for two other papers using the presented tool for preliminary design applications.