Profili (airfoil plotting software)
Profili is an interesting plotting package for Windows, by Stefano Duranti of Italy. In addition to being a full featured plotting package, it has a couple of interesting extra features:
- Incorporates XFOIL flow analysis software
- Import bitmap images and convert them to standard coordinate files.
For this review, Profili was used to compare the section on an actual Mini Ellipse to the nominal RG15 section. I did this by sawing through the Mini Ellipse wing (it was a crashed one!) about two inches from the root, and tracing around it. The trace was then scanned and imported into Profili. Profili drew outline of both the RG15 and Mini Ellipse sections (first diagram).
I then used the Xfoil feature to calculate and compare the polars resulting in the polars in the second and third diagrams.
The maximum discrepancy is less than 0.5 mm anywhere on the airfoil.
Slightly more drag is predicted for the Mini Ellipse section in range Cl = 0.8 - 1.0
Profili is available from www.profili2.com