On the aerodynamics of paper airplanes

The design of Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) is challenging since the aerodynamic efficiency of airfoils and wings decreases at low Reynolds-numbers. While many MAV approaches investigate biological designs, we present an investigation on the aerodynamics of paper airplanes, which fly in the same Reynolds-number range as MAV, but have the advantage of simplicity. We present flow visualizations and force measurements in a water tunnel on the dart paper airplane design.