Chord Analysis

In the chord analysis applet, you're able to experiment with changing the length of the airfoil. Rather than simply changing the length, what you'll do by shrinking the airfoil is start to turn it into a circle. By expanding the length, you'll turn it back into the familiar airfoil shape.

One interesting thing to do is to shrink the chord length to the minimum, and see how the streamlines start to run around the circle

Warning: This applet is computationally intensive. On most modern computers, the time it takes to update after you click is under one-tenth of a second, but on more outdated computers, it may take as much as five seconds. Please don't click again, thinking nothing happened, as the applet is recomputing the streamlines.

Instructions

When the applet loads, you will see an airfoil with many lines around it - the streamlines. The airfoil which appears by default is representative of a modern airfoil. To look at an airfoil representative of that on the Wright Brothers flier, click the "early" button. If you decide you'd prefer to go back to a more modern airfoil, click the "modern" button.

Using the two arrows pointing to the left and right, you can shrink and raise the chord length, respectively.