Uiuc Airfoils MCP server

@pipeworx/uiuc-airfoils

Airfoil shape coordinates for roughly 1,600 airfoils (NACA, Eppler, Selig, Wortmann, Goettingen, Drela AG, Clark Y, Wright Brothers and many designer-named one-offs), searchable by name or family, with max thickness/camber computed live from the raw coordinates.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1851+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

or exact family (e.g. "naca", "eppler", "goe", "2412", family: "Wortmann"). With no filters, returns the total catalog size and the known family list. Always returns the total match count first; a no-match response names the filters tried.

• uiucairfoilsearch(query?, family?, limit?) — search by name, keyword,

airfoil's coordinate file live and returns its point count, coordinate format, max thickness and max camber (each as a fraction of chord, with the chordwise station they occur at), and the method used to compute them. Pass include_coordinates: true to also get the raw upper/lower surface point arrays.

• uiucairfoilgeometry(name, include_coordinates?) — fetches one

Auth

Keyless.

Data sources

UIUC Airfoil Coordinates Database — airfoil shape coordinates and their one-line descriptions. Never a route or filename here — see src/index.ts and scripts/bake-index.mjs for the routes, which stay out of published copy per CLAUDE.md step 9b.

• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Applied Aerodynamics Group,

Licence — checked before building, flagged rather than assumed

Before writing a line of code, I checked the database's listing page, its parent page, and the site's robots.txt (a 404 — no restriction stated there either) for a stated licence or redistribution policy. There is none. The only copyright-adjacent text anywhere on the site is a generic, site-wide footer ("© 1994 - 2026 UIUC Applied Aerodynamics Group") with no accompanying grant or prohibition for the coordinate data itself.

Per the standing rule (proxying a public, keyless upstream per request needs no explicit grant; baking a dataset is redistribution and needs one; when terms are silent, build and flag rather than hold):

fetches each airfoil's .dat file live, per call, every time — a straight per-request proxy of one file.

• The actual coordinate values are never baked. uiucairfoilgeometry

descriptions and a coarse family classification (src/uiuc-index-data.ts, ~1,587 rows, regenerated by scripts/bake-index.mjs) — never the coordinates. This is the part resting on the "silent terms, build and flag" branch of the rule rather than an explicit grant.

• uiucairfoilsearch does read a small baked table of names, one-line

redistribution term for the coordinate data, re-check whether even this name/description/family index still fits it.

• Flag for whoever reviews this next: if UIUC ever publishes an explicit

Coordinate formats and the thickness/camber method

UIUC's .dat files come in two layouts, both handled by the parser in src/index.ts:

on the upper surface, runs forward to the leading edge, then back along the lower surface to the trailing edge. No header counts; the parser splits the loop at its minimum-x point (the leading edge).

• Selig format — one continuous point loop: starts at the trailing edge

then the upper surface from leading edge to trailing edge, a blank line, then the lower surface from leading edge to trailing edge.

• Lednicer format — a header line giving (upperCount, lowerCount),

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.