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One of the most popular books for aeronautical engineers is the Dover Publications classic Theory of Airfoil Sections by Ira H. Abbott and Albert E. von Doenhoff. This book has three large appendices containing tables of coordinates of a selection of NACA profiles, mean lines and sections. Many students and designers have consulted these tables for many years for the definitive numerical description of the NACA series of airfoils. Unfortunately, there are many examples of miscalculated points and typographic errors in these tables, reflecting the computational state of the art of the period.

Several computational schemes have been developed over the years that enable the airfoil designer to obtain the correct values. But many readers still use these tables. The linked pages below reproduce the three appendices of the book with the tables generated automatically and printed with four decimal places. The cambered sections in Appendix III are shown in the traditional form with the upper and lower points for a given chord station located normal to the local mean line. They are also shown with the upper and lower surface values computed at the same chord station.

All of the numbers were computed using the procedures of reference 8, which is part of PDAS, version 7.

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References

  1. Abbott,Ira H.; and von Doenhoff,Albert E.: Theory of Airfoil Sections. Dover, 1949,1959.
  2. Abbott,Ira H.; von Doenhoff,Albert E.;and Stivers,Louis S.: Summary of Airfoil Data. NACA Report 824, 1945
  3. Theordorsen,Theodore: Theory of Wing Sections of Arbitrary Shape. NACA Report 411, 1931.
  4. Theodorsen,Theodore and Garrick.I.E.: General Potential Theory of Arbitrary Wing Sections. NACA Report 452, 1933.
  5. Loftin,Larry: Theoretical and experimental data for a number of NACA 6A-series airfoil sections NACA Report 903, 1948.
  6. Ladson,Charles L.; and Brooks,Cuyler W.,Jr.: Development of a Computer Program To Obtain Ordinates for NACA 6- and 6A-Series Airfoils. NASA TM X-3069, 1974.
  7. Ladson,Charles L.;and Brooks,Cuyler W.,Jr.: Development of a Computer Program To Obtain Ordinates for NACA 4-Digit, 4-Digit Modified, 5-Digit, and 16-Series. NASA TM X-3284, 1975.
  8. Ladson,Charles L.;Brooks,Cuyler W.,Jr.;Hill,Acquilla S.:and Sproles,Darrell W.: Computer Program To Obtain Ordinates for NACA Airfoils NASA Technical Memorandum 4741, 1996.
  9. Carmichael, Ralph L.: Algorithm for Calculating Coordinates of Cambered NACA Airfoils at Specified Chord Locations.AIAA 2001-5235, 2001.

Some of these may be downloaded as PDF files.


If you are interested in the way these pages were made for the web, there is a How to do it page.

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