Moderately Thin Airfoils

A general cambered airfoil may be represented by sources and vortices with the source strength of a symmetrical airfoil with the same thickness distribution and the vorticity distribution of a cambered plate at the desired angle of attack.

This solution will lead to a singularity at the leading edge except at the ideal angle of attack. A better estimate of the velocity distribution can be obtained by adding the velocity distribution around a thick symmetrical airfoil at angle of attack to the perturbations associated with the camberline at the ideal angle of attack. This is not as simple since thin airfoil theory does not provide the velocity distribution over a thick symmetrical airfoil at angle of attack. However, if we can find this distribution, from experiment or some other theory, we can combine it with thin airfoil results to provide a more general solution.