There are a number of people and organizations that offer software and information that may be of value to aeronautical engineers and aviation enthusiasts. I have looked at all of these sites carefully and am favorably impressed by each one. However, I haven't checked out all of the software, so this is not a professional recommendation.
| Link | Comments |
|---|---|
| Abbott Aerospace | Many computational procedures may be downloaded as spreadsheets. Look for Spreadsheets under Resources. Richard Abbott. |
| AeroLogic | The Personal Simulation Workshop - Loftsman for geometric layout of external lines, Cmarc for flow analysis, Postmarc for interpretation of results. Peter Garrison |
| AERONAUTICA 3D | Creates aircraft and aviation oriented 3D computer models. DXF files, thousands of polygons |
| Aircraft Designs | Books and Software plus consulting. Martin Hollmann, Rick McWilliams |
| Airfoil Design Workshop | A useful wing lofting utility. Terry Majewski. |
| Airplane PDQ and Airfoil Optimizer | An introductory airplane design program from DaVinci Technologies. Gil Crouse |
| Analytical Methods | Aeronautical consulting and software. Strong on user support and good interfaces for analysis codes. |
| AVID LLC | AVID (Air Vehicle Integrated Design) offers aircraft design tools and consulting. Paul Gelhausen and Sam Wilson. |
| CADRE Analytic | Finite element analysis software for structural analysis. |
| Calmar Research | Among other things, Calmar offers Tranair and AGPS originally developed by Boeing. |
| Ceasiom | Computerised Environment for Aircraft Synthesis and Integrated Optimisation Methods. A reasonably complete vehicle synthesis package with integrated optimization. Incorporates the Tornado vortex-lattice program. Free. |
| CFD Resources Online | Links to many sites with CFD software |
| Cise | The Computing in Science and Engineering Portal. This is a joint project of IEEE and AIP and is based on the well known journal. It is to become a software repository, but right now it is more promise than delivery. |
| Conceptual Research | Information on books Aircraft Design - A Conceptual Approach (3rd ed.), Simplified Aircraft Design for Homebuilders, RDS Software and Dan's short course. My favorite book list. Dan Raymer |
| CuSoft Research | Some interesting charts and spreadsheets to improve your cross-country soaring tactics. |
| DARcorporation | Advanced Aircraft Analysis (AAA) and other design and analysis programs. U. Kansas, Jan Roskam, William Anemaat |
| Desktop Aeronautics | LinAir,Panda,SAND,ADW,Plot. Also Applied Aero textbook on CDROM. Ilan Kroo. |
| Dreese Software | Airfoil design code. John Dreese. |
| FlightGear | Open Source flight simulator |
| FoilSim | Interactive airfoil (and baseball) solver. Good graphics. From NASA Glenn. Tom Benson. |
| Hanley Innovations | A number of computational aerodynamic tools, such as VisualFoil airfoil analysis program., Multi-Surface Aerodynamics, Stallion 3D CFD package. Patrick Hanley |
| Hegedus Aerodynamics | A new startup that will develop tools for aerodynamic analysis and design. One product, Aero Troll, available for download. Martin Hegedus. |
| Holy Cows | Holy Cows is a project that puts a friendly graphical interface on Digital Datcom. Bill Gailbraith. |
| Lissys | PIANO is industry-standard software for commercial aircraft analysis and competitor evaluation, with a calibrated database of planes. |
| M H Airfoils | Lots of good info relating to model airplane aerodynamics. Martin Hepperle. |
| Mattingly | Jack Mattingly has published a guide to the collection of programs that he has developed. Propulsion and performance oriented. |
| MetaComp Technologies | CFD++ program |
| NACA.BAS | A coding of the NACA airfoil geometry in Basic by Dave Lednicer |
| Nielsen Engineering and Research | Aeronautical consulting and software. Strong on missile aerodynamics, store separation, etc. |
| Open Channel | Open Channel Software has most of the old COSMIC collection of software from NASA. They refer to them as NASA Classics. There is some overlap with PDAS, but Open Channel has a wide assortment of codes, not just aeronautical. |
| Optimal Aircraft Design | ADS - Aircraft Design Software for the analysis and design of any aircraft configuration from UAVs to light transport aircraft. Didier Breyne. |
| Pilot 3D | 2D/3D NURB surface design software that includes the UIUC airfoil database. Special tools include the ability to smooth the raw airfoil offset data, create 3D foil shapes, and output 2D/3D information for construction. Steve Hollister. |
| SoarSoft Software | CompuFoil3D program for airfoil plotting and lofting. Lots of features to help model airplane builders. Eric Saunders |
| TetrUSS | NASA Tetrahedral Unstructured Software System. A Rapid Aerodynamic Analysis and Design Capability For Complex Configurations by Non-Expert Users. |
| USGS | Software from the US Geological Survey. There is a lot of interesting software here. It is all written for water so there is a big gravity effect that you don't find in aero codes, but you might find something of interest. |
| Vehicle Sketch Pad | OpenVSP is a parametric aircraft geometry tool. OpenVSP allows the user to create a 3D model of an aircraft defined by common engineering parameters. This model can be processed into formats suitable for engineering analysis. The predecessors to OpenVSP have been developed by J.R. Gloudemans and others for NASA since the early 1990's. On January 10 2012, OpenVSP was released as an open source project under the NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) version 1.3. |
| Virginia Tech | Links to many useful small programs from Bill Mason and William Devenport. Highly recommended. |
| Vrand | Finite Element and Optimization Software. Gary Vanderplaats |
| WinFoil | Another airfoil analysis/design program. Emphasis on model airplanes. Malcolm Hardy |
| XFLR5 | This is a 3D wing plus body code incorporating XFOIL. Emphasis on low Reynolds numbers for model airplanes, UAVs, etc. |
| Xfoil | XFOIL is an interactive program for the design and analysis of subsonic isolated airfoils. Mark Drela and Harold Youngren. Check the Virginia Tech site for valuable notes on running Xfoil. |
Go to the aeronautical information page or the aeronautical instruction page or the web links page.