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Aerodynamics, An intro«
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Aerodynamics is one of the three pillars of aerospace engineering, other two
being Structures and Propulsion. However it has many applications in
other fields of engineering. Its Importance can never be over emphasized; a
typical example is first successful powered flight of 1903 which owes its
success to optimized Aerodynamics of Wright Flyer. More recent example is
unique aerodynamic design of Re-entry vehicles (Space Shuttles and ICBM
etc) which solved the issue of overheating of outer surface of craft at high
speeds.
Aerodynamics falls under the study of fluid dynamics and there are many
standard definitions given by Gurus of Aerodynamics (me skipping them,
they are 2too boring, apologies to Prandtl) Basically it is "Study of air flow
& its interaction with bodies & the CHEMISTRY between them" (Think it
like love chemistry ;).
But the more fun part about this equation is that it is yet to be solved
analytically.(They have even put a prize for solving these) So kudos to
Navier and Stokes who did their best to make this thing un-solvable ;D but
still our geek brothers at mathematics department have come up with
certain pretty good solutions ,most of which are numerical.
So if you take Navier-Stokes and some Math¶s Geniuses and some help
from our TECH guys at Intel and mix them "Voila" ,you have yourself a
brand-new branch ,Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD).
It has been proven very reliable in predicting flow behaviors and all the
stuff which took hours in wind tunnels. All you have to do is 1) Draw the
picture (i.e. Model the body and domain) 2)Put really good boundary
condition (good means CrRRECT here) and 3)Let the Processor thingy
handle the Mathematical equations which depict the Navier-stokes.
(Trust me it¶s not as easy as it sounds: p)
Well some people think that RedBull does the trick too but i have my reservations ;D
(Most material in this Article is extracted from JHrN D ANDERSrN'S books ,rne of
best writers on Aerodynamics )
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