Title

Creating Exact Bezier Representations of CST Shapes

Author Info

David D. Marshall, California Polytechnic State University - San Luis ObispoFollow

Recommended Citation

Postprint version. Published in 21st AIAA Computational Fluid Dynamics Conference Proceedings: San Diego, CA, June 24, 2013.

The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2013-3077.

Abstract

The paper presents a method of expressing CST shapes pioneered by Kulfan into standard Bezier curves and surfaces. Out of the seven standard shape classes identified by Kulfan as representable using CST curves, four of them, including airfoils, can be represented as Bezier curves exactly. For the other three, a convergent series expansion proves insufficient to achieve any practical accuracy, however these three classes are not the most commonly used of the CST classes. With the ability to express most common CST curves and surfaces as generic Bezier curves and surfaces, CST shapes can be used in CAD, solid modeling, meshing or any other geometry tool that does not explicitly support CST.

Disciplines

Aerospace Engineering

Copyright

2013 AIAA American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc..