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Engine cowling

F

flightsimer

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us-pennsylvania
Well, im back. My C-123 model is still in the works, but for the time being, im working on a different plane to help me for my C-123. I actually got close to putting systems into the 123 and even had it in the sim, but then i decided i was gonna restart it from scratch because when i compared angles on the model to the same angles of pics i have take, they werent matching up.
1-6-11-4.png


But anyways, for this plane, I have the fuselage just the way i want it, and the wing is shaped to almost its final config (just need to put the winglets on, which im not sure on those yet). Tonight i have been working away on the engines, but im completely at a loss how i model the intakes for the cowling. Geometrically, i just can't picture how i get this intake out of the current shape i have as the engine. The only other way i can think of is to make a seperate object for the intake.

Im working on a Beechcraft C90GTx and will eventually use it as a basis for every Kingair family member. I got the back of the engines finished for the most part, but i want to work on the front now.

Any help would be great


1-6.jpg

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Hawk...1418430/&sid=b24be1240a03d99343028a84d983109e
 
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Hi,
there was a good tutorial on cowlings/ air intakes over at FFDS, made by the late Gerard vd Harst as an answer to a similar question i posted.

http://www.aerodynamika.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1177930101

Unfortunately with the passing of Gerard, the pictures also vanished from the post, but it should get you going as it is well described.

I managed to make the engine cowlings for the Antonov i was working on back then (still not finished), using this method.


Basically what you do is:
-select the front polygon(s) of your nacelle
-apply a face extrude modifier with amount of 0, but a scale of say 90 %.
-this adds another ring of edges inward of the extisting edges if all is ok
-select the new front polygons that are within the limits of those new edges and extrude inward.
-select the front edges and apply a chamfer to round off the edges. you can play around with the chamfer amount for an optimum result.

Hope this helps!

grt
Willem
 

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should have been a little more specific. My problem with the PT-6 engine cowling is modeling the outside of the air scoop on the bottom.

Is there a easy way to do it from my current engine or should i just make the scoop from a seperate object and attach it to my current engine?
 
Thats a very sophisticated thing to do. I know that scoop area intake you are talking about.

I often will do sections, and then bridge them...

There are many ways to do it. Sometimes I will actually create the 'opening' (a flat rounded edged 'shape' of the intake) and then bend, cut, extrude, repeat, until I have bridged over to the opening scoop area. Its alot of work. I wish there was a simpler way.

Max people in college are taught to make a basic rock shape, or base shape that they work with, and use Mesh-Smooth with 1 or 2 Iterations to check the final mesh. (2 would be ALOT). But it makes it easier to work with (the basic shape form) and then add a Mesh Smooth/Iteration later, both as checkers along the way, as well as the final version, collapsed.
 
flightsimer said:
Is there a easy way to do it from my current engine or should i just make the scoop from a seperate object and attach it to my current engine?
Click to expand...

That might be the easiest way of doing this.
You'll still suffer with the blending between the air intake and the prop extension though. That'll be a tough one to tackle, but it's been done before so with a lot of hard work you'll get there.

For the opening of the air intake, the method described earlier should work just great.

grt
Willem
 
You can make it as a separate object and then rearange the vertices of the main engine pod that come in contact with the scoop in order to make them coincident with the scoop's contact vertices and then delete the faces that are covered by the scoop and the faces of the scoop that are in contact with the pod. Finally weld all the coincident vertices and the scoop will blend perfectly.
Here's an example of the final result. Not an engine scoop but uses the same process I described:
s46N_blend.JPG
 
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ok, sounds like having two piece is the best way then. Thanks for confirming this and i will give an update with some results (or lack of any) tomarrow if i get a chance to work on it.

I think i somehow always manage to complicate things more than they need to be.
 
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