An improved geometric parameter airfoil parameterization method

In the process of airfoil optimization, it is required to represent an airfoil with parameters, and the goal is to represent arbitrary airfoils with less parameters. In this paper, a new airfoil parameterization method is proposed, called the IGP method, which realized camber-thickness decoupling so that camber and thickness could be constructed respectively with fewer parameters compared to the previous methods. Also the IGP method is featured with clear physical meaning and consecution of parameter domain. The mathematical model is introduced. With this camber-thickness decoupling method, the definition and the domain of the control parameters was determined. To validate the feasibility, the most used airfoils were fitted and reconstructed by this method. Then according to the results of geometric and aerodynamic comparative analysis between original airfoils and fitted airfoils, the precision of the IGP method could meet the requirement of airfoil optimization.