Public Domain Aeronautical Software (PDAS)  

Contents

This collection of aeronautical software consists of the following programs. Additional information on each program may be found by following the highlighted link. The name in bold type following the slash at the end of each program description is the name of the folder on the CD where the files for this program will be found. Some of the programs are noted as work-in-progress, indicating that they are lacking in instructions or documentation or do not run properly.

Ablation Dynamics Analyze the transient response of an ablating axisymmetric body, including the effect of shape change.  / ABAXI
Ablative Nozzle Materials Predict the ablation performance of rocket nozzle heat protection materials. (work-in-progress)  / ABLATE
Aeroelastic Analysis Estimate the planform and aeroelastic effect on stability derivatives and induced drag. (work-in-progress)  / ELASTIC
Airfoil Smoothing Calculate the smoothness of a given airfoil defined by a table of coordinates. Compute a smoothed version of the airfoil that may give better results from an analysis program. The programs available are AFSMO by Harry Morgan of NASA Langley and PROFILE by Leslie Collins and David Saunders of NASA Ames.  / AFSMO and  / PROFILE
Atmospheric interaction plume Predict the gas dynamic and chemical properties of underexpanded rocket plumes. (work-in-progress)  / AIPP
Annular Duct Velocity Compute the velocity distribution along an arbitrary line between the inner and outer walls of an annular duct with axisymmetric swirling flow. (work-in-progress)  / ANDUCT
Three-Dimensional Supersonic Viscous Flow Determine the viscous and inviscid flow about a body of revolution at angle of attack. (work-in-progress)  / AOFA
Aircraft roll-out iterative energy simulation program Analyze brake performance during landing rollout. It incorporates actual flight data from telemetry. Developed for the Space Shuttle vehicle. (work-in-progress)  / ARIES
Analysis of Aircraft Motions Derive aircraft motions, forces, and accelerations from radar range data.  / ATC
Arrow Wing Wave Drag Closed form solution for the wave drag of an arrow or delta wing with sharp edges based on work of Rogers and Puckett and Stewart.  / ROGERS
Atmosphere Characteristics of the 1976 standard atmosphere to 1000 km altitude. An atmosphere procedure is given that you may include in your own programs. Separate versions are supplied in Basic, C, Fortran, Pascal, C++, and Fortran90, Visual Basic and Delphi, IDL, and Python. Sample programs are included that print an atmosphere table. Non-standard atmosphere routines (hot, cold, polar, tropical) are also included.  / ATMOS
Cascade Flow (2D) Nonrotating Blade-To-Blade, Steady, Potential Transonic Cascade Flow Analysis Code (work-in-progress)  / CAS2D
Celestial Coordinate Transformations There are at least three basic frames of reference for celestial coordinates: equatorial, ecliptic, and galactic. This module contains subroutines for performing transformations from one system into another.  / CELEST
Cold Arc Dissociated air flow effects during plasma arc testing. (work-in-progress)  / COLDARC
Compressible Flow Calculator Make calculations involving isentropic flow, normal shock waves, oblique shock waves, Rayleigh and Fanno flow, and characteristics of the standard atmosphere. Two versions of the same calculations are provided; one is a Microsoft Windows application and the other is a web based application with the gasdynamic equations coded in JavaScript within the web HTML file.  / VUCALC
Computer Methods for Mathematical Calculation The software from the classic textbook by Forsythe, Malcolm and Moler has been rewritten in modern Fortran along with the sample problems and a number of the end-of-chapter problems. You probably need a copy of the book.  / FMM
Conical Relaxation Conical relaxation program for supersonic wing design and analysis (work-in-progress)  / COREL
Contour Plotting (I) A General Algorithm For The Construction Of Contour Plots  / CONPLOT
Contour Plotting (II) Generalized digital contouring program  / CONTOUR
Digital Datcom Estimate stability and control characteristics of a wide variety of airplane and missile configurations with this famous USAF program. Has all example cases from the document, both input and output.  / DATCOM
Divergence Aeroelastic divergence characteristics of unguided, slender body, multi-stage launch vehicles (work-in-progress)  / DIVERGE
Eppler The well-known Eppler airfoil program including boundary layer analysis.  / EPPLER
Fair Data Compute the coefficients of a smoothing spline that approximates a set of data. Originally designed to be used for wind tunnel data but may be applicable to diverse applications.  / FAIRDATA
Flexible spacecraft dynamics Simulate a large class of flexible and rigid spacecraft. The flexibility is treated continuously (by use of shape functions) rather than by finite elements. (work-in-progress)  / FSD
Flow Field in Supersonic Inlet Based on 2D or axisymmetric method of characteristics. NASA Ames program by Virginia Sorensen.  / INLET
Fluid Properties A companion program to GasProperties computes thermodynamic and transport properties of many gases. Treats air and steam as well as pure fluids. From NASA Glenn (Lewis).  / FLUID
Flutter Analysis by Strip Theory A modified strip analysis has been developed for rapidly predicting flutter of finite-span, swept or unswept wings at subsonic to hypersonic speeds. (work-in-progress)  / FLUTTER
GasProperties Compute real gas properties of ten important gases over a wide range of temperatures and pressures. Covers cryogenic regions and saturated liquid/gas regions. From NASA Glenn (Lewis).  / GASP
Geometry Conversion Convert the geometry information for the WaveDrag,WingBody, and PanAir into WGS for input to the hidden-line program or ThreeView. Display your vehicle concepts.  / 2WGS
GRAPE Two-Dimensional Grids About Airfoils And Other Shapes By The Use Of Poisson's Equation.  / GRAPE
Hypersonic Aerodynamics for Arbitrary Bodies. This is a totally new program based on the USAF program written by Gentry, Smyth and Oliver of Douglas Aircraft. Currently, only the inviscid methods are coded. The geometry is supplied in LaWgs (Langley Wireframe Geometry Standard). (work-in-progress)  / HYPER
Induced Drag from Span Load Distribution. This is a popular algorithm for computing the span load distribution on a planar wing when only a few sparse values of the loading are known.  / INDUCED
Interplanetary Mission Planner A flexible interplanetary mission analysis program using patched conics. (work-in-progress)  / TOMARS
Line Interpolation and Line Intersection Tools to help you get those needed data points when doing an airplane layout.  / LININTRP
IPEG Improved Price Estimation Guidelines (work-in-progress)  / IPEG
LONGLIB A Graphics Library for Engineering Plots. (work-in-progress)  / LONGLIB
Mean Aerodynamic Chord Compute the mean aerodynamic chord of a wing of arbitrary planform.  / MEANAEROCHORD
Kernel Function Compute unsteady aerodynamics with a kernel function technique which uses assumed pressure functions with unknown coefficients. (work-in-progress)  / KERNEL
Mass Properties of a Rigid Structure Rapidly calculate the mass properties of complex rigid structural systems.  / MASSPROP
Missile Lift Aerodynamic Lift On Wing-Body Combinations At Small Angles Of Attack In Supersonic Flow (work-in-progress)  / MISLIFT
Mission Analysis A segmented mission analysis program for low and high speed aircraft. (work-in-progress)  / NSEG
NACA Airfoils. The coordinates of 4-digit, 4-digit-modified, 5-digit, 6-series, and 16-series airfoils may be accurately calculated. Newly modified to present upper and lower surface points at the same x-coordinate. Totally recoded in modern Fortran using modules.  / NACA456
NASTRAN plotting post processor Plot the results from NASTRAN. (work-in-progress)  / NASTPLT
Nozzle Exhaust Analysis of three-dimensional supersonic nozzle exhaust flow fields (work-in-progress)  / EXHAUST
Optical Systems Analysis A General Optical Systems Evaluation Program (work-in-progress)  / GOPTICS
Optimum Flight Path (I) A vertical profile which minimizes aircraft fuel burn or direct operating cost (work-in-progress)  / OPTIM
Optimum Flight Path (II) Optimum Trajectory of a Turbofan Airplane  / OPTTRAJ
Optimal Regulator Algorithms for the Control of Linear Systems Design controllers and optimal filters for systems which can be modeled by linear, time-invariant differential and difference equations.  / ORACLS
Pablo Compute aerodynamic properties of an airfoil with boundary layer. Similar to Eppler, but coded with MatLab.  / PABLO
Panair (A502) High order aerodynamic panel code. The most versatile and accurate of all the linear theory panel codes. Subsonic/supersonic solutions with linear source strength variation and quadratic doublet strength variation. Very versatile boundary condition specifications.  / PANAIR
PanAir input pre-processor Helps create the carefully formatted input files to PanAir.  / PANIN
Parametrized Investigation of Launch Opportunities and Trajectories Delimits launch widows to define the dates and times of day that a satellite may be launched to satisfy mission constraints. (work-in-progress)  / PILOT
Polynomial Root Finder Solves quartic/cubic/quadratic polynomial equations with real coefficients taking special care in accuracy and precision.  / QUARTIC
Quiz Program An educational drill program that will teach you the aviation phonetic alphabet, 3-letter airport codes and more. Easily adaptable to other instructional tasks.  / QUIZ
Mars Relay Communication Link Evaluates the communication link between a Mars lander, a Mars orbiter, and Earth. Designed for the Viking mission. (work-in-progress)  / RELAY
Rotorcraft Aeroelastic Analysis for Rotorcraft in Flight or in a Wind Tunnel (work-in-progress)  / ROTOR
Turbine Rotor Blade Design of Two-Dimensional Supersonic Turbine Rotor Blades with Boundary-Layer Correction (work-in-progress)  / RBLADE
Super/Hypersonic Inviscid Flow Computes the inviscid supersonic/hypersonic flowfield about complex vehicle geometries. (work-in-progress)  / SHIFARC
Rational Spline Subroutines Scientific data often contains random errors that make plotting and curve-fitting difficult. The Rational-Spline Approximation with Automatic Tension Adjustment algorithm leads to a flexible, smooth representation of experimental data.  / RSPLINE
Sonic Boom This program computes the propagation of a sonic boon through the earth's atmosphere.  / BOOM
3-view and Silhouette Perspective views of an arbitrary configuration defined by wireframe meshes of gridpoints with hidden line removal. Written by David Hedgley of NASA Dryden. A very simple program called 3view is also included that produces plan, side, and rear views from the same input file.  / HLP
Sneak Circuit Analysis Analyzes electrical circuits to assist in the design of wiring bundles. (work-in-progress)  / SNEAK
Solar Powered Satellite Computes the solar energy incident on photoelectric array and determines the thermal radiation gained and lost. Once these are known, the amount of power which can be generated and the temperature of the array is determined.  / SOLARARR
Space Shuttle Synthesis Program Conceptual design synthesis of one- or two-stage launch vehicles. (work-in-progress)  / SSSP
Supersonic Wing Analysis Combines source and vortex panel singularities for calculating the linear theory estimate of supersonic configuration aerodynamics. (work-in-progress)  / W12SC3
Takeoff and Landing of Transport Aircraft This program provides for the detailed performance analysis of the takeoff and landing capabilities of specific aircraft designs and allows for sensitivity studies. The program calculates aircraft performance in accordance with the airworthiness standards of the Federal Aviation Regulations. (work-in-progress)  / TOL
Tandem Blade Flowfield Velocities And Streamlines on a Blade-To-Blade Stream Surface of a Tandem Blade Turbomachine. (work-in-progress)  / TANDEM
Supersonic Wing Design The famous Carlson-Middleton program for supersonic wing design. (work-in-progress)  / TEA201
Thermal Response One-Dimensional Numerical Analysis Of The Transient Thermal Response Of Multilayer Insulative Systems (work-in-progress)  / THERM1D
Tidy A program for renumbering statements in a Fortran program.  / TIDY
Thermal Protection System Multidimensional Heat Conduction Program (work-in-progress)  / TPS
Trajectory Operations and Requirements Monte Carlo Investigation Of Trajectory Operations And Requirements. (work-in-progress)  / MONITOR
Turbulent skin friction A coding of the reference temperature method of Barbara Short and Simon Sommer of NASA Ames.  / TURBSF
V/STOL Aircraft Sizing and Performance Performs comparative design study of V/STOL aircraft systems yielding aircraft size and mission performance data. (work-in-progress)  / VASCOMP
Variable Dimension Automatic Synthesis Program VASP is a variable dimension Fortran version of the Automatic Synthesis Program, used to implement Kalman filtering and control theory.  / VASP
Visualize Three-Dimensional Surfaces Visualize a function of two variables.  / VIEWER
Vortex Lattice Minimum Drag (VLMD) This is one of many versions of the vortex lattice aerodynamic program from the low speed aerodynamics group at NASA Langley.  / VLMD
Variable Metric Algorithm for Constrained Optimization The algorithm is based upon a variable metric method presented by M.J.D. Powell and a quadratic programming method by R. Fletcher. VMACO is a non-linear program developed to calculate the least value of a function of n variables subject to general constraints (both equality and inequality).  / VMACO
Wave Drag by Area Rule This is the famous Harris Wave Drag Program from NASA Langley.  / WAVEDRAG
WingBody panel code Subsonic/Supersonic Aerodynamics of simple wing-body-tail combinations. This is the Woodward panel code that includes calculation of the wing shape for minimum drag in supersonic cruise.  / WINGBODY
Wireframe generator Creates wireframe models of simple wings and bodies.  / MAKEWGS

All programs are supplied with complete public domain source code. Many of the programs include sample cases (both input and output) along with instructions for preparation of input files. You may use any of the programs or subroutines in your aeronautical projects. Individual programs may be downloaded free of charge.

Public Domain Aeronautical Software (PDAS)