Low Reynolds Number Airfoil Design for Subsonic Compressible Flow

An airfoil design study has been conducted to examine the capability of providing high lift in the Reynolds number range of 0.5 to 5.0 million at Mach 0.4. This relatively moderate Mach number produces significant compressibility effects when design lift coefficients in excess of 1.5 are desired. Four example airfoils have been developed with various thickness ratios and degrees of aft loading. The MIT ISES airfoil analysis code has been used to theoretically predict performance including drag rise characteristics. In addition, as a calibration, the ISES code was applied to airfoils where wind tunnel results were available, and agreement with the data was very good.