Abstract:

The VFP wing-body method is ideally suited for concept and preliminary design studies as the method can rapidly produce results and does not require prolonged set up times. This means that complete polars can be produced in hours, generating a large amount of data which can be analysed as part of the decision-making process before the next variation of the design can be investigated. To help improve and reduce the analysis time a VFP analysis program has been written to read data from selected VFP output files to produce a set of files which are in a format which can be easily copied and pasted into Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets. There are two Excel spread sheets, which have been set up to display the data in a form which will enable a quick assessment of the design, covering the operating envelope of the aircraft. One of the Excel spread sheets covers the loads and the other shock induced separation and low speed clean wing C_{L max}.

Two PowerPoint presentations giving additional details on the use of the VFP analysis program and spreadsheets are also provided:

• Using the boundary spreadsheet,
• Using the vfploads spreadsheet.

See also:

• ESDU 13013: Viscous full-potential (VFP) method for three-dimensional wings and wing-body combinations. Part 1: Validation of VFP results with experiment and comparisons with other methods.
• ESDU 13012: Viscous full-potential (VFP) method for three-dimensional wings and wing-body combinations. Part 2: Use of VFP and related programs.
• ESDU 13014:Viscous full-potential (VFP) method for three-dimensional wings and wing-body combinations. Part 3: VFP error messages, failures and suggested remedies.