New features in XFOIL 6.

1 (April 94)
------------------------------------ An improved plot library libPlt.a is now used, courtesy of H. Youngren.
It allows resizing of the window, and plots are not erased upon overlay
by another window. A minor new nuisance is that the cursor does return
automatically to parent window after cursor input.
- All LOGICAL*1 arrays have been eliminated (good riddance!).
CHARACTER strings are used instead. This was made possible
by the new plot library which accepts CHARACTER variables.
- Mach number can now scale with 1/sqrt(CL) just like Reynolds number.
- Numerous improvements have been made to the GDES, MDES, and QDES
facilities. Cursor-input Qspec(s) in QDES and MDES will now match
slopes where grafted into the current Qspec(s). Much fewer cursor
input points are now required. Same goes for the geometry contour
in GDES. The slope-matching can be disabled to get the cruddy old
way of doing things. The Qspec(s) plot in MDES and QDES now also
features an x/c grid overlay, making it more obvious where the
airfoil nose is among other things. The Qspec(s) plot in MDES
can also show Qspec(s) for more than one angle of attack, showing
the effect of any modification on off-design pressure distributions.
Symmetric airfoils can be much more easily designed now in MDES
and GDES.
- Treament of non-unity airfoil chords is now much more consistent.
Clear distinctions are made between cartesian x,y and the airfoil
chord line-based x/c,y/c coordinates. GDES now has more general
airfoil positioning and scaling operations, and there is better
graphical info on the results of flap and camber change operations.
- Cursor-selected blowups in QDES and MDES now produce exactly
the blowup region demarked, not some approximation thereto.
The GDES blowups are also more faithful, but must still be
approximate since they will not allow x/y distortion.
- A second-order treatment of the amplification equation has been
implemented. As expected, It makes the solution less dependent
on the panel density. However, it also seems to be less robust.
For this reason, it has been implemented only as an option,
and the old first-order treatment has been retained as the
standard formulation. To switch between the two, a few labeled
code lines in SUBROUTINES AXSET, TRCHEK (in xblsys.f) simply
need to be commented/uncommented.
New features in XFOIL 6.3 (Oct 94)
---------------------------------- Nice grid overlays and axis limit set capabilities have been
added to the viscous variable plots (VPAR).
- GDES has a number of new options, mainly for controlling
individual coordinate points.
- Minor modifications have been made to the viscous formulation
to make it very nearly the same as the MSES 2.6 formulation,
except that XFOIL still uses a single-layer wake.

New features in XFOIL 6.4 (Dec 94)

---------------------------------- A modification to the e^n transition criterion has been added
to make it more reliable, especially for small Ncrit. The
default form for the amplification equation is now second-order.
- Limiters have been put into most of the turbulent correlations
to make them automatically revert to their laminar form at small
Rtheta, including the dissipation coefficient for the wake.
As a result, XFOIL will now produce reasonable answers for
chord Reynolds numbers down to about 1000, which approaches
the Stokes-flow regime. The airfoils must be reasonably thin,
however, else there might not be any steady solution due to
vortex shedding. Thin indoor-model wing airfoils can be
predicted reasonably well, for example.
New features in XFOIL 6.6 (March 96)
------------------------------------ A fourth type of airfoil coordinate format is now recognized.
This is called a "labeled coordinate file", and is the same as
the plain format file, but includes the airfoil name string
on the first line, followed by the coordinates.
- A completely new plot library is now used, courtesy of H.Youngren.
It supports color, PostScript echo on demand (instead of the arcane
hardcopy-toggle approach of the previous plot library), lowercase
fonts, LaTex-like math fonts (in annotation menu), etc. This
one plot library is used for all machines.
- Color is now used in many of the screen plots, but only where
it actually helps to see what's happening. Color is NOT used
for ornamental purposes. Hence, many of the plots or parts
of plots are still monochrome. Color PostScript can be output
by setting the IDEVRP flag appropriately (see SUBR. INIT).
- The "!" command is now understood by OPER,GDES,MDES, and QDES.
This simply repeats the last valid command, and saves typing
in repetitive-command situtations.
New features in XFOIL 6.8 (August 96)
------------------------------------- The matrix-conditioning problem which appears in sharp-TE cases
with large TE angles has been significantly alleviated. A more
forgiving TE vorticity extrapolation scheme is used.
- GDES now displays useful geometric info along with the airfoil shape.
- Color is now used in most of the plots to aid visualization.
The plot can be customized with a number of plot options set
in the PLOP menu. Portrait orientation plots can now be
generated if desired.
- Almost all commands which result in prompted input can now
be given arguments with the input values. For example,
instead of

.OPERi

c> alfa

Enter angle of attack (deg)

r> 3.5

one can simply type

.OPERi

c> alfa 3.5

which suppresses the prompt and just takes the "3.5" as its input.
This also works for multiple-input commands. For example:
.OPERi

c> aseq 0 10 0.5

does the usual alpha-sequence calculation with no further prompts.

This also works for filenames. For example:
XFOIL

c> load e387.dat

New and final(!) features in XFOIL 6.9 (February 00)

---------------------------------------------------- Finally fixed that annoying screwy behavior with sharp trailing edges.
Instead of the vorticity extrapolation scheme, the chordwise velocity
at an internal point near the TE is set to zero to enforce solution
regularity there (this complements the Kutta condition, which controls
the normal velocity component). This additional internal point is
placed 1/10 of the smallest panel length ahead of the TE. The results
are extremely insensitive to its exact location.
- Multiple airfoil versions and associated polars can now be stored
inside XFOIL. The polars and airfoils are managed in OPER.
Having the polars and airfoils online reduces the amount of
airfoil read/writes and mental bookkeeping which was required
in previous XFOIL versions which had only one airfoil stored.
Quite a few new commands have been added to OPER to deal with
this additional stuff, but everything more or less defaults to
the previous conventions if only one airfoil is kept stored.
The session.txt file has a sample session with multiple polars.
- Airfoil interpolation can now be performed with the INTE
command at top level.
- A bunch of Youngren's camber/thickness modification stuff has
been incorporated into GDES.
- Most of the interactive modification displays now include
"Erase" and "Done" keys in addition to the "Abort" key.
These can also be activated just by typing "e", "d", or "a"
rather than by clicking on the button. The Erase key
deletes the previous click entry (or previous entries if done
repeatedly). The Done key terminates input. In previous versions
this was done by three identical clicks, which was sometimes
difficult to do.
XFOIL 6.91 (December 00) (first web release)

-------------------------------------------- Renamed "Gamma" to "Q" in the QDES and MDES menus. This gives
somewhat more obvious relation to "Qspec".
- The PREM command has been added to the OPER menu. This allows
removing individual points from stored polars.
- The CADD command has been added to the GDES menu. This adds
new points into the buffer airfoil at excessive panel corners.
The new points are interpolated using a uniform-parameter spline,
which gives much smoother shapes near the leading edges of
Selig and Eppler airfoils, whose point spacing at the leading edge
is usually not suitable for Xfoil's arclength-parameter spline.
For example, the load sequence...
LOAD s6063.dat
GDES
CADD
<return> (accept default inputs)
<return>
<return>
<return>
PANE
(generate new paneling using smoother buffer airfoil)
will give a much smoother paneled airfoil than the more direct...
LOAD s6063.dat
PANE
XFOIL 6.92 (January 01)
----------------------- Fixed the PSOR command. Giving "0" for the polar index now sorts all
the polars as advertised. Previously, this deleted all the polars (oops).
- Fixed PPLO command. Giving multiple individual polar indices now plots only
those polars as advertised. Previously, all polars were always plotted.
- Added DUMP and OVER commands to the VPLO menu. This allows comparing
viscous variable distributions between different airfoils and/or
different operating points.
- Added BLC, BLWT commands to OPER menu. These allow plotting of boundary
layer velocity profiles on airfoil in Cp vs x plot. Gives more insight
into what the flow is doing than just the displacement body shape.
XFOIL 6.93 (18 January 01) HHY
----------------------- Improvements to polar plotting for XFOIL and PPLOT. Many fixes to read
XFOIL and non-XFOIL polar files. Routine polplt.f overhauled to eliminate
numerous cruftious hacks and long-standing polar plot problems.
- PPLOT improvements to add options and de-obfuscate menu choices. Tweaks to
make pplot.f work with new polplt.f changes. More robust than previous
version - now reads MSES and old XFOIL format polar files.

- Fixed CAMB options for INPP and MODP. Plotting hack for INPP fixed to
to properly display grid. MODP problems (improper scaling of user points)
fixed.
- Changed ASKR and ASKI and all relevant calls. Now ASKR or ASKI calls do
not modify variable passed in if read line is blank (i.e. user just inputs
a <cr>). Lines to set reasonable defaults added throughout where these
routines read temp variables or variables not stored in globals. This affects
mostly routines in GDES.
- Latest plotlib (version 4.44) included. This version has several bug fixes
and adds capability to write separate postscript files for each plot (if you
ask for this). Also default background color is now black. User must now
specifically ask for white background by setting environment variable
"XPLOT11_BACKGROUND white". This is done for csh/tcsh and bash using
csh: setenv XPLOT11_BACKGROUND white
bash: export XPLOT11_BACKGROUND=white
- Bug in dplot.f (LGUI declaration) and funky format (A,I) in xplots.f changed
to work with g77.
XFOIL 6.93 (March,April '01) MD's additions
------------------------------------------- Made CM axis line up with CL-axis tics in polplt.f .
- Changed Xplot11 to start cursor at previous location rather than at
center of plot window. Makes repetitive mouse input much more pleasant.
- Checks for excessive panel angle in input coordinates, and prints
suggested corrective action if indicated.
XFOIL 6.94 (Nov '01)
-------------------- Put in alternative short versions of most commonly used commands
Examples:
"ALFA" and "A" are now equivalent commands in OPER
"EXEC" and "X" are now equivalent commands in MDES,QDES,GDES
- Added a number of minor widgets and doodads
- Fixed PostScript output semi-bug (wrong number of tokens after %%Page)
XFOIL 6.95 (Feb '03)
--------------------- ITER command in OPER now accepts a numeric argument like the other commands
- Improved ADDP and MOVP in GDES, allowing optional keyboard x,y entry
- Added I,O,P key functions in cursor-modifiaction windows,
allowing zooming and panning without exiting the window
- Added individual-frequency plotting to A/Ao plot in VPLO.
Requires Orr-Sommerfeld database in compatible binary form.
This is built in the new directory orrs/

XFOIL 6.96 (Jan '05)

--------------------- Added a bunch of features to PPLOT.
Power coefficient polars and aircraft polars can now be plotted.
- Added graphic enable/disable flag to PLOP sub-menu.
Allows suppression of graphics output for batch execution.
- Increased default number of panel nodes from 140 to 160
- Changed VACCEL logic to make it independent of airfoil size
(previously it assumed that chord was comparable to unity)