Geometry that fails quietly
Bad TE, crossed panels or sparse LE curvature corrupt every polar. Without a quality gate, teams discover the problem after hours of analysis.
Airfoil design software for OEMs & UAV teams
HENFOIL
Own the section decision — create, prove, analyse, select and export — with every method labelled for what it is, and what it is not.
HENFOIL is HENDOI’s live airfoil product for aerospace OEMs, Tier suppliers, UAV / eVTOL teams, labs and researchers. Aircraft-level mission and trade work continues in HENSYNTH.
What it is
The airfoil decision trail, in the browser
Purpose: help engineers design, analyse, select and archive a wing section with a trail someone else can defend in review — without pretending a conceptual polar is a wind-tunnel certificate.
Create or import a shape, pass the geometry gate, climb an analysis ladder, build polars, compare and rank, inverse-design or optimize, check robustness, then publish a datasheet or loft for manufacturing export. Method IDs and trust cards sit on calculated numbers.
One HENDOI login unlocks HENFOIL. Plans are Student, Professional and Team.
Product home
henfoil.hendoi.com
The working product lives on its own subdomain. Register or sign in on hendoi.com first if you do not have a session. Geometry, polars, studies and reports live in the app.
Open HENFOILProblems it solves
Pain points section teams hit before a defensible choice.
Tool hop without a trail
Create in one tool, polar in another, rank in a spreadsheet. Review cannot see why #1 won — only that someone preferred it.
Desktop lock-in
Installers, licenses and “works on my machine” slow OEM and UAV collaboration. Browser workspaces share one account trail.
Over-claiming fidelity
Marketing that pretends a quick polar is a wind-tunnel certificate. HENFOIL labels every method so you know what you bought.
Compared to existing tools
Where HENFOIL fits — and where it does not.
XFOIL-class desktop solvers
Excellent for interactive polar work on a single machine. HENFOIL adds geometry gates, selection ranking, batch jobs, inverse / optimize, exports and a documented trail in the browser — see our comparison notes on the blog.
XFLR5 / QBlade-style suites
Strong for teaching and early wing/airfoil experiments. HENFOIL focuses the section decision for OEM / UAV selection: honesty gates, VIC production polars, compare / select and archive packages.
Spreadsheets + scripts
Flexible but fragile. HENFOIL keeps create → gate → analyze → select → export in one product with method IDs under calculated numbers.
Full RANS / certification CFD
Required later. Wrong cost for first section ranking. HENFOIL’s ladder starts cheap and escalates only when the decision needs more physics — and never claims flight-Re certification.
What you can do
Concrete jobs on the section trail — from first ordinate to a documented choice.
- Create a family airfoil or import a DAT and condition it until the quality gate passes
- Digitize a section from a calibrated image when paper or pixels are all you have
- Build viscous polars with VIC and compare candidates with a scored ranking
- Run batch polars across many sections or conditions without hand-clicking each case
- Inverse-design or optimize toward a target feature, then check robustness to Re and manufacturing
- Loft a parametric wing and evaluate station-wise VIC at local Reynolds numbers
- Run a unit-span section FEA screen for early structural intuition on the box
- Ask HEN-AI to call tools and explain stored results on the airfoil trail
- Export datasheet / design-review PDFs, STEP/IGES loft, or a HENFOIL_AirfoilDesignPackage
The design loop
Step 1
Create, import or digitize
NACA / analytic families, CST / PARSEC, Selig–Lednicer DAT, or image digitize → calibrate → trace → commit.
Step 2
Inspect & condition
Repair, repanel, normalize, quality metrics and the airfoil workflow (condition → validity → viscous rescue → trust).
Step 3
Climb the analysis ladder
Thin-airfoil → Hess–Smith panel → Thwaites–Head IBL → VIC viscous polars — escalate only when needed.
Step 4
Polar, compare, select
Multi-point polars, envelopes, batch, weighted compare and selection ranking with a clear why-#1.
Step 5
Inverse, optimize, robustness
Inverse screens, grid / gradient / Bayesian optimize, sensitivity, diagnose, intervene, living review.
Step 6
Report & export
Datasheet and design-review PDFs, STEP/IGES loft export, and a HENFOIL design package for your archive.
Capabilities
Create & catalog
Generate NACA 4/5/6/16/6A (and modified), Clark Y, Joukowski, Kármán–Trefftz, Van de Vooren, biconvex / wedge / diamond, CST and PARSEC starters. Named research cards stay pending licensed ingest — no invented ordinates.
Import, digitize & geometry
Selig / Lednicer DAT with inspect → repair → repanel. Digitize from image. Metrics for t/c, camber, LE radius, TE, curvature, CST / PARSEC fit and PASS / WARNING / FAIL quality.
Analysis ladder
Thin-airfoil Fourier, Hess–Smith panel, Thwaites–Head IBL + eⁿ screening, then VIC as the production polar engine. Optional Euler, IB NS pictures and gated RANS-SA when the decision needs them.
Compare, select & batch
Weighted compare with why-#1, selection / ranking, envelopes (cruise / climb / robustness), and batch viscous runs at serious scale — with async jobs for large sets.
Inverse, optimize & intervene
Inverse target CL / Cp screens, NACA / CST grid and gradient paths, Bayesian (GP-EI) optimize, sensitivity, robustness (Re / transition / manufacturing), diagnose and intervene tools.
3D wing loft & section FEA
Parametric loft (extrude / tapered / swept / twisted) with station-wise VIC at local Re — not 3D wing RANS. Unit-span section FEA screen for stress / buckle / hinge — not a certification spar engine.
Analysis ladder
Start cheap. Escalate only when the decision needs more physics. Each rung is labelled so you know what you bought.
- 1.
Thin-airfoil & classical
Fast intuition for camber and lift-curve slope before denser panels.
- 2.
Hess–Smith panel + Kutta
Inviscid panel solutions on conditioned geometry.
- 3.
Thwaites–Head IBL + eⁿ screen
Boundary-layer and transition screening envelopes — not a production transition certificate.
- 4.
VIC viscous polars
Production polar engine for the compare / select loop. A VIC polar is not a RANS polar.
- 5.
Optional Euler / IB / RANS-SA
Transonic Euler, IB NS pictures, gated body-fitted RANS-SA — labelled screens, not flight-Re certificates.
Who it is for
- Aerospace engineers choosing wing sections
- UAV developers iterating airfoils quickly
- Universities and researchers
- Students on shared HENDOI plans
- Wind-energy and aero designers
- Teams that need a documented selection trail
Honesty & exports
When a polar and a geometry are good enough to archive, export a HENFOIL_AirfoilDesignPackage — coordinates, metrics, polar / validity, transition, roughness and provenance — or STEP/IGES loft for CAD.
VIC ≠ wind tunnel
VIC is the polar engine for decisions. It is not XFOIL-equivalent marketing and not a substitute for tunnel or flight-Re RANS validation.
Screens stay labelled
IB pictures, Euler, eⁿ and gated RANS-SA are screening tools. They are not flight-Re wall-resolved certificates.
Catalog honesty
Generated families are computed in-process. Named research foils stay metadata until licensed attested ingest — we do not invent UIUC ordinates.
HEN-AI
Inside HENFOIL it calls tools and explains stored results; it does not invent polars. Request pools sit on your HENDOI plan.
Reports
Datasheet and design-review PDFs from the in-house C++ PDF engine — method IDs under the numbers, not a third-party report SaaS in the critical path.
Learn more
From the HENDOI blog
Deep notes on the analysis ladder, VIC polars, geometry gates, selection honesty and how HENFOIL compares to existing tools — written for engineers.
- What is HENFOIL?
- Getting started with HENFOIL
- The analysis ladder
- VIC polars — capabilities and limits
- Honesty gates explained
- Geometry quality gate
- HENFOIL vs XFOIL
- HENFOIL vs XFLR5 / QBlade
- Airfoil selection in HENFOIL
- HENFOIL to HENSYNTH — section to aircraft
Ready for the aircraft?
After the section is chosen, continue mission, screening and trades in HENSYNTH.
Engineering use. A VIC polar is not a RANS polar. Screening CFD pictures are not flight-Re certificates. Section FEA is a unit-span screen, not NASTRAN. Results do not replace wind-tunnel data, certification analysis or professional engineering judgement.
Questions? See the FAQ, Pricing or contact us.
Aerospace industry collaboration
Share thoughts and ideas — help us build better solutions
We are looking for aerospace industry collaboration. Share your thoughts, ideas and real workflow challenges so we can improve our products and deliver the best solutions for OEMs, UAV / eVTOL teams, labs and aeronautical engineering companies.
- What slows your team with tools you use today?
- What would make HENFOIL, HENSYNTH or our upcoming stack (HENMESH, HENFLOW, HENSTRUCT) more useful in your pipeline?
- Ideas for mesh, CFD or structural workflows we should prioritise next?
Get started
If you do not have an account yet, create one and try HENFOIL.
Register on HENDOI, pick a plan, open HENFOIL, and run your first geometry gate and polar. The same account unlocks HENSYNTH for aircraft conceptual design. Student USD 9, Professional USD 29, Team USD 89.