Buffalo Wings

Buffalo Wings is a Python geometry library for building airfoil and wing models from aerodynamic definitions. It is designed to support interactive design workflows, visualization tools, and downstream analysis or meshing pipelines. The long-term goal is to provide a strong geometry foundation for GUI-based airfoil and wing design applications.

Why This Project Exists

Buffalo Wings focuses on aerodynamic geometry rather than general-purpose CAD. The library is meant to turn validated airfoil and wing definitions into queryable geometry objects that can support plotting, inspection, meshing, and higher-level design tools. That includes future GUI-oriented applications for constructing and visualizing airfoils and wings.

Current Focus

The current public API is centered on two modules: buffalo_wings.airfoil for airfoil geometry and airfoil definitions, and buffalo_wings.wing for wing geometry and wing definitions.

Today, the airfoil subsystem is the most mature part of the project. Wing geometry support is under active development. GUI applications are a planned direction rather than a released feature.

Quick Start

Install Buffalo Wings from PyPI with:

pip install buffalo-wings

Create a NACA 4-digit airfoil from a designation:

import numpy as np
import buffalo_wings.airfoil as bwa

airfoil = bwa.AirfoilFactory.naca4_from_designation("2412")
t = np.linspace(-1.0, 1.0, 11, dtype=np.float64)
x, y = airfoil.xy(t)

Create the same airfoil from a public schema object:

import buffalo_wings.airfoil as bwa

spec = bwa.Naca4AirfoilSpec(designation="2412")
airfoil = bwa.AirfoilFactory.from_spec(spec)

The supported public modules are buffalo_wings.airfoil and buffalo_wings.wing. Shared low-level foundations such as numeric typing, numeric normalization, and structured diagnostics come from buffalo_core. Modules under buffalo_wings.*.internal are implementation details and are not part of the supported external API.

Where To Go Next

Start with examples/airfoil/create_naca4_from_designation.py for a minimal airfoil construction example. See examples/airfoil/create_naca4_from_spec.py for the schema-driven airfoil path. See examples/wing/create_rectangular_wing.py for a minimal public wing example. See the online documentation for examples, API reference, and developer notes. See the changelog for recent changes and project evolution.

Contributors

The main contributors to this project are:

• David D. Marshall

Version History

See the changelog for details.

Code of Conduct

This project is governed by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (v3.0). By participating, you agree to uphold it. Please see the code of conduct for details and reporting instructions.

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 3 of the License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.