Theory References

The general XFOIL methodology is described in

Drela, M., XFOIL: An Analysis and Design System for Low Reynolds Number Airfoils, Conference on Low Reynolds Number Airfoil Aerodynamics, University of Notre Dame, June 1989.

which also appears as a chapter in:

Low Reynolds Number Aerodynamics. T.J. Mueller (Editor). Lecture Notes in Engineering #54. Springer Verlag. 1989. ISBN 3-540-51884-3 ISBN 0-387-51884-3

The boundary layer formulation used by XFOIL is described in:

Drela, M. and Giles, M.B. Viscous-Inviscid Analysis of Transonic and Low Reynolds Number Airfoils AIAA Journal, 25(10), pp.1347-1355, October 1987.

The blunt trailing edge treatment is described in:

Drela, M., Integral Boundary Layer Formulation for Blunt Trailing Edges, Paper AIAA-89-2166, August 1989.

Other related literature:

Drela, M., Elements of Airfoil Design Methodology, Applied Computational Aerodynamics, (P. Henne, editor), AIAA Progress in Aeronautics and Astronautics, Volume 125, 1990.

Drela, M., Low-Reynolds Number Airfoil Design for the MIT Daedalus Prototype: A Case Study, Journal of Aircraft, 25(8), pp.724-732, August 1988.

Drela, M., Pros and Cons of Airfoil Optimization, Chapter in “Frontiers of Computational Fluid Dynamics, 1998”, D.A. Caughey, M.M. Hafez, Eds. World Scientific, ISBN 981-02-3707-3