Airfoils are often connected to aviation. They can be considered the aerodynamic basis of wind energy converters, as well. Altough airfoils might be considered the smallest aerodynamic unit, several complex effects of fluid dynamics already occur at this stage. Therefore, the investigation and analysis of these profiles will stay relevant for more years to come.
Nowadays, numerical simulations regarding lift and drag characteristics are conducted in collaboration with wind tunnel experiments.
Due to the great flexibility of flow simulations, airfoil simulations provide a foundation for even more advanced studies. An example is the approach of adjoint shape optimization.