When designing a human powered hydrofoil a lot of information can be found scattered on the internet. By no means it is our intention to duplicate this information here.

However, when it comes to wing deflection calculations and the bending inertia of foils, information becomes scarce. Partially this is because these calculations can be complicated if one persues an exact solution. As a consequence, people that design human powered hydrofoils often do not bother about these type of calculations OR people revert to sophisticated simulation programs in which the methods are often masked by fancy output.

In both cases not very helpful for the hydrofoil enthousiast who is looking for information. From our own experience with WingBike, but also judging by the amount of questions in the different internet forums, straightforward equations that deal with this matter are nearly impossible to find on the internet.

This, and a chance of winning the IHS Mandles prize, motivated us to share some of the knowledge we gained in the WingBike project.

The documents below are an attempt to make this information available in such a way it can be reproduced in Excel.  It’s not intended for the scientist nor the aeronautical engineer, merely for the enthousiast who wants to learn more:

1    Section Modulus and Bending Inertia of Wings   (June 2013)

2   Method to determine correction factors for Section Modulus and Bending Inertia equations  (Nov. 2013)                         

3    Wing bending calculation with a Single set of Equations   (Jan. 2014)