bladex.profilebase.ProfileBase.max_thickness

ProfileBase.max_thickness(n_interpolated_points=None)

Return the airfoil’s maximum thickness.

Thickness is defined as the distnace between the upper and lower surfaces of the airfoil, and can be measured in two different ways:

• American convention: measures along the line perpendicular to the mean camber line.
• British convention: measures along the line perpendicular to the chord line.

In this implementation, the british convention is used to evaluate the maximum thickness.

References:

Phillips, Warren F. (2010). Mechanics of Flight (2nd ed.). Wiley & Sons. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-470-53975-0.

Bertin, John J.; Cummings, Russel M. (2009). Pearson Prentice Hall, ed. Aerodynamics for Engineers (5th ed.). p. 199. ISBN 978-0-13-227268-1.

Parameters:

• interpolate (bool) – if True, the interpolated coordinates are used to measure the thickness; otherwise, the original discrete coordinates are used. Default value is False
• n_interpolated_points (int) – number of points to be used for the equally-spaced sample computations. If None then there is no interpolation, unless the arrays x_up != x_down elementwise which implies that the corresponding y_up and y_down can not be comparable, hence a uniform interpolation is required. Default value is None

Returns:

maximum thickness

Return type:

float