MPARISOH • WORTH ANN FX 61 -140 AIRFOIL AND MEAN LINE

What Are
Wortman
Airfoils??
by Harry Riblett, EAA 29576
416 Riblett Lane
Wilmington, DE 19808

In this article, we will FIG. 1

examine Wortmann airfoils,
and will compare the The Wortmann airfoils were designed relatively thin trailing edges. They have
characteristics and perfor- in the early 1960's by Herr Doktor F. X. plenty of camber in the nose, which
mance of a typical Wort- Wortmann of the Technischen makes them good at low Reynolds
Hochschule in Stuttgart, West Ger- numbers; however, the pitching mo-
mann airfoil with a compar- many. They are primarily intended for ments are very high on these airfoils.
able NACA airfoil and with sailplane and other low Reynolds This is not a big disadvantage on
number applications. They are laminar sailplanes, where the tail lengths are
a GA airfoil designed by flow sections, medium to high cam- long (typically 4 to 5 chord lengths), but
this author. bered, have relatively small leading on general aviation applications, where
edge radii, feature camber relief be- typical tail lengths are 3C (3 chord
tween 40% and 70% of chord and have lengths) and less, the resultant trim

— REYNOLDS NO. = 2 « 10* ABOVE Ct = 5 6 X 10* BELOW Cc = 5

— SURFACE ROUGHNESS = r = 0 (SMOOTH)
— NO FLAPS
— TRIM DRAG CORRECTED FOR TAIL LENGTH 2 3C
— PERFORMANCE PER "AIRFOIL li PROGRAM HR
7'11'U
-H— ——I—— ——I—— —•— —I-
014 016 Oil 020 .022 .024 .026 .026 .030
CD' • CORRECTED DRAG COEFFICIENT
FIG 2

SPORT AVIATION 39
 touted by Dr. Wortmann is evident. The
vertical placement of the bucket is con-
trolled primarily by the initial camber
angle, shown on Figure 1 to be about
15 degrees for the Wortmann airfoil. We
feel that this is excessive, since it has
placed the bucket relatively high on the
chart, penalizing the high speed perfor-
mance. Thus Dr. Wortmann's bucket is
not as wide as he thinks it is. In contrast,
the other two airfoils have the bucket in
a better range. Notice the overall
superior performance of the "conven-
tional" airfoils, especially at the high
e speed end. The Wortmann airfoil has a
7
better Clmax without flaps, but this is a
v PERFORMANCE WITH SIMPLE FLAPS
15% THICK MEDIUM CAMBER AIRFOILS
rather meaningless parameter for an
C FLAP = 20
airplane with flaps. Much more impor-
D6FL = 25" tant is Clmax with flaps, as shown on
r - 0
X AS INDICATED
R» = Z l 10* Figure 3. Note the excellent flap effec-
PER -AIRFOIL «• PROGRAM tiveness of the GA airfoil. Figure 4
shows the poor performance of the
Wortmann airfoil regarding C.P. travel
FIG. 3 and trim drag, a result of the high
camber and aft loading.
From a construction standpoint, the
drag becomes a considerable disad- Figure 2 polar diagram presents cl vs. (typical) large underside cusp on the
vantage. The only GA application that cd' data for the three airfoils, as deter- Wortmann airfoil is a disadvantage.
makes sense with these airfoils is for mined by a computer program called Also, due to the small trailing edge
airplanes without flaps, since the high "Airfoil II", the Eppler program. Notice angle, aileron control forces would be
camber produces relatively high Clmax that this is corrected drag data, includ- higher, other things being equal.
without flaps. High performance (lami- ing trim drag for a typical airplane with Our conclusion from this study is that
nar flow) GA applications without flaps
are rare, however.
We selected the FX61-140 for "Designed in the early '60s, Wortmann airfoils are
analysis, and compared it with the
NACA 63-A315(a = .5) low Cm airfoil
primarily intended for sailplane and other low
and also with the GA35U-A315. Coordi- Reynolds number applications."
nates for these latter two airfoils are
listed in the author's book, "GA Airfoils",
which contains 54 NACA low Cm a tail length of 3C. Also notice that the Wortmann airfoils might make sense for
(a = .5) airfoils and 72 GA airfoils, with data is for Rn = 2 x 106 above Cl = .5, some sailplanes and models, but not for
performance data. All three of these air- and Rn = 6 x 106 below Cl = .5, which typical general aviation airplanes. Bet-
foils have their maximum thickness at are typical numbers for general aviation ter airfoils are available.
.35C, and are (nearly) the same thick- applications. The "wide laminar bucket"
ness, thus they are comparable. In the
Wortmann designation system, FX is
Herr Doktor Wortmann's initials, and 61 <:„ 1 .4 6 .( 1.0 CL 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.S 20
is the year of the design. The only useful .55 1
1
-^^ - -~——T^—————————————'— • ' *
information is in the last three digits;
140 indicates 14.0% maximum thick- ^V^^ *l><-.» TRIM DRAG V^C L

ness. .50 * 001

/\\
•^^V
/'
.^ ^.
\
CENTER OF PRESSURE V. C,
15% THICK MED CAMBER AIRFOILS
Figure 1 is a sketch of the three air- \ \. \ - R. = 2 » 10* ABOVE Ct = 5

foils, for comparison. Also shown is the

45
s; \ A \ 6 » 10" BELOW CL = .5

mean (camber) line for each. Notice the 002 g '

a
^X
? V\ /
A- GA35-A315 \
»v
- NO FLAPS
— TAIL LENGTH « JC
typical camber relief on the Wortmann *O x \<*~- FXI1-MO v

airfoil between .40C and .70C. The idea

40- .003
is that this region of negative camber
(negative lift) will delay the trip of the a
u
laminar boundary layer to turbulent 35 .004 '
flow, thus extending the laminar flow re-
gion, reducing drag. This "double hump"
camber is common to all Wortmann air- JO ^*»T*~"^'5~-C^
foils, and has been copied on some of
the recent NASA NLF airfoils. Unfortu- .P * . -~ j*"*

nately, it is not a good idea, especially

since it penalizes the performance with 1 TOP SPEED

flaps (see Figure 3). Conventionally

<
"u . . J^__ . . __ ]
CRUISE 1 CLWB , HR-7/1J.M
cambered airfoils have positive camber
.4 1.0 1.} 1.4 1.6 11 20
over 100% of their chord length, and t » c

are thus able to produce higher Clmax FIG. 4

with flaps, other things being equal.
40 NOVEMBER 1988