Tag Archives: airfoil

Aerodynamics Myths

This engineering talk discusses aerodynamics, lift generation, and a couple of common myths that persist in the aviation community. The talk was presented at the July meeting of the Texas Flying Club (http://www.texasflyingclub.com/). As a general guideline, the audience was comprised of pilots, such that the mathematics and physics are not presented as a formal proof but presented with the intent to convey understanding. One key point made is that any discussion of aerodynamics concepts must be consistent with continuity of mass, momentum, and energy. A simple freestream, source/sink, and vortex model was presented to explore a consistent understanding of aerodynamics for aviation.

One Vortex to rule them all, One Vortex to find them,
One Vortex to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Aerodynamics where the Myths lie

Joukowski Transform

\(\) The Joukowski transform is a stunningly simple mathematical operation that converts a circle into an airfoil.

$$w=z+\frac{c^2}{z}$$

The beauty of the transform is that ideal fluid flow past a circle is described by a classic and well known set of terms.

joukowskicylinderflow

I made a small visualization program that allows experimentation with a Joukowski airfoil in an ideal fluid flow environment. This is meant to illustrate conformal mapping to my GES 554 class and airfoil theory to AEM 614.