Originally posted by Ollie
Instead of paying $295 for Design Foil, I would down load X-Foil free from:
http://raphael.mit.edu/xfoil/
In the description of Design Foil there is no mention of laminar seperation bubbles. It may be that it doesn't deal with this important aspect of low reynolds number performance prediction. I don't know of any program that deals with low reynolds number airfoils better than X-Foil.
Actually, I only paid 1/3 that price on a promo they had going which put it below the price of other pseudo-cad plotting packages & had no simulator component hatsoever. The file handling capabilities looked like 1-stop shopping: import & conversion (Selig .arc .dat, Drela .mse, Compufoil .cor). It exports into autocad, rhino & solidworks which was important to me. The ability to manipulate, modify, stretch airfoils in a simple windows interface is convenient. The aerodynamics stuff was almost a secondary issue although I am interested.
Re your low Re lam sep comment, Im not an expert in this area. FWIW the manual mentions usage of SNACK airfoil analysis engine, boundary layer calcs based on von Karman, transition model based on Schlicting or Michel, turbulent flow based on Buri, drag coeef based on Squire-Young. Color coded indicator circles do appear on the airfoil chosen indicating stagnation pt, laminar bubble or laminar separation resulting from the air, velocity, AOA etc inputs.
Whether these methods are accurate, to what degree, better/worse than x-foil, I havent got a clue. It would be great to hear from more qualified guys like you who work with this stuff routinely. I think its available as a free download for a period, why dont you give it a whirl & enlighten us?