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Modelling an aerofoil blade

buzzybee

New member
Hi,



I am new to SolidWorks and am trying to create an aerofoil blade for a
turbine. The blade is made up of 9 aerofoil sections which I have
created on planes and lofted between each. The lower camber of
the aerofoils are all flat. Lofting works well until tip of the
blade. I just can't seem to get a nice rounded and smoothed off
tip for my blade. I would have thought this would have been a
basic thing to do in solidworks, but I can't seem to get it to
work. Does anyone have suggestions or any tutorial that could
help me?



Thanks in advance for any suggestions.



Jenny
 
Jenny -



Maybe try using just a point entity at the apex of your blade, and then
when you create your loft (assuming you pick that point as your last
loft profile), pick "Normal to Profile" as an End Constraint. Then play
with the "End Tangent Length" value to round over the blade tip....
 
Jenny,


I would try making another loft of the tip curvature of the airfoil. Create a plane perpendicular to the flat top surface you already have. Then use parallel planes to the first plane to create a loft of the tip. See attached picture.


Dan
 
Thank you to you both for your reply to my problem. I am having more success now thanks to your suggestions.



Jenny
 
Hi Jenny-


Did you figure out the best way to handle this? I'm trying to do a similar thing with a model aircraft wing. Not sure how to deal w/ the leading and trailing edges at the tip per Dan's comments above.


Thanks, -Jeff
 
Jeff,


I'm just guessing, but I think the problem you have is how to create a loft profile of the leading and trailing edges per my sketch above.


If so, try making "fake" profiles of extremely small sizes, like .001" x .001".


Go to my website to see a mockup of your airfoil demonstrating the above solution. I couldn't attach the picture here because it's too large.


Go to: http://www.dj-design.com/temp1/Airfoil.JPGhttp://www.dj-design.com


Best of luck,


Dan



Edited by: djacob7
 

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