Originally Posted by
Downwind Lander
Once in a while one comes across a wing that seems so bad that anyone could improve upon it.
There is a massive NACA database of aerofoil (airfoil if googling in US) sections and NASA has more tucked away somewhere.
It should be possible to start with:
MTOW
Intended cruising speed
Engine power
Take off, landing, stall speeds
Wing loading, wing span
No. of seats
Maybe more criteria
Structural reserve factors
Technology used on company existing products and available for reuse
Available manufacturing techniques and capacity
Structural reserve factors
Data on latest available materials.
Size and mass of available actuators
Fuel tank requirements
Mach number limits
Latest certification requirements
Lessons learned from previous designs
Projections for future development
The market and operational requirement to minimise excess structure
Those are some of the "maybe more criteria".
And in that context major manufacturers maybe design a new wing every 15-20 years, and minor manufacturers perhaps every 5-10 years. So anybody leading the activity is as likely as not, never have to have had a senior role in wind development before - and if they did, it was almost certainly with the use of different design techniques.
This is not to say that it's impossible, or that it's not done well in most cases. But it's extremely inaccurate to presume that you can just plug the numbers into a bit of software or standard set of algorithms and get the right answer out of the box. That is what happens on undergraduate degree courses because of the need to massively simplify problems to get the basic principles across to students - but not in the real world.
G