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Camber is a complex property that can be more fully characterized by an airfoil's camber line, the curve Z(x) that is halfway between the upper and lower surfaces, and thickness function T(x), which describes the thickness of the airfoils at any given point. The upper and lower surfaces can be defined as follows:
For symmetrical airfoils =, so the aerodynamic center is at 25% of chord measured from the leading edge. But for cambered airfoils the aerodynamic center can be slightly less than 25% of the chord from the leading edge, which depends on the slope of the moment coefficient, . These results obtained are calculated using the thin airfoil theory so ...
For this reason, on a cambered aerofoil the zero-lift line is better than the chord line when describing the angle of attack. [2] When symmetric aerofoils are moving parallel to the chord line of the aerofoil, zero lift is generated. However, when cambered aerofoils are moving parallel to the chord line, lift is generated. (See diagram at right.)
The camber line is shown in red, and the thickness – or the symmetrical airfoil 0012 – is shown in purple. The simplest asymmetric foils are the NACA 4-digit series foils, which use the same formula as that used to generate the 00xx symmetric foils, but with the line of mean camber bent. The formula used to calculate the mean camber line is [4]
An airfoil with camber compared to a symmetrical airfoil. The maximum lift force that can be generated by an airfoil at a given airspeed depends on the shape of the airfoil, especially the amount of camber (curvature such that the upper surface is more convex than the lower surface, as illustrated at right). Increasing the camber generally ...
Some important parameters to describe an airfoil's shape are its camber and its thickness. For example, an airfoil of the NACA 4-digit series such as the NACA 2415 (to be read as 2 – 4 – 15) describes an airfoil with a camber of 0.02 chord located at 0.40 chord, with 0.15 chord of maximum thickness.
Pitching moment coefficient is fundamental to the definition of aerodynamic center of an airfoil. The aerodynamic center is defined to be the point on the chord line of the airfoil at which the pitching moment coefficient does not vary with angle of attack, [ 1 ] : Section 5.10 or at least does not vary significantly over the operating range of ...
The definition becomes = ′, where is the reference length that should always be specified: in aerodynamics and airfoil theory usually the airfoil chord is chosen, while in marine dynamics and for struts usually the thickness is chosen. Note this is directly analogous to the drag coefficient since the chord can be interpreted as the "area per ...