AE 2020 :Low Speed Aerodynamics
Catalog Description: AE 2020: Low speed Aerodynamics. 3-0-3
Basic results, conservation laws, potential, airfoil and wing analysis. Boundary layers on plates and airfoils. Pressure gradients.
Introduction to turbulence and vortex-dominated flows.
Text: At the level of Bertin and Smith, 2nd Edition.
AeroCD: CD and Web-based multimedia learning tool.
Lifting-line and 2-D panel codes provided for student use in design problems.
Image-based problem sets for assignments.
Learning Objectives
1. How aerodynamic lift, drag and pitching moment are generated, and how they act.
2. Basic physical approach to describing fluid dynamics.
3. Potential flow concept to describe and predict aerodynamics.
4. Thin-airfoil theory and genesis of the results of 2-D incompressible results.
5. Finite-Wing effects and their modeling.
6. Lifting-line approach to calculate lift and induced drag on wings.
7. Boundary-layer concept to describe effects of viscosity.
8. Simple models of the boundary layer .
9. Physical concepts of turbulence and its effects.
10. Features of flows at high angles of attack.
Prerequisites
1. Newton's laws of motion
2. Basic Trigonometry
3. Concept of scalars and vectors: dot products, cross-products, curl.
4. Partial derivatives; contour, surface and volume integrals.
5. Computer literacy for problem-solving using spreadsheets, making 2-D plots
6. Chemistry: perfect gas equation, Avogadro's Number.
7. Must have seen pictures of airplanes.
Lecture Topics
1. Introduction to Aerodynamics:
Lift and drag coefficients, aspect ratio, induced drag, need for analysis in fluid dynamics.
2. Fluid Motion: Streamlines, translation, dilatation, rotation and vorticity, strain, viscosity, circulation
3. Conservation Laws:
Laws of physics: Mass, momentum & energy conservation. Simplifications. Relating line, area and volume integrals.
Incompressible & steady flows. Euler's equation, Bernoulli's equation, pressure coefficient.
4. Potential Flow Method:
Velocity potential; Laplace equation; superposition of solutions, boundary conditions. Elementary solutions: uniform flow,
source/sink, doublet, vortex.
5. Airfoils:
Specifying circulation and the Kutta condition. Airfoil shape. Vortex sheet. Thin airfoil theory, lift curve slope, center of pressure,
aerodynamic center.
6. Wings:
Observed characteristics, trailing vortices, vortex sheet, starting vortex, downwash, induced drag. Vortex filament and Biot-Savart Law,
Helmholtz's vortex theorems. Prandtl's lifting line theory, Glauert solution, elliptical lift distribution.
7. Computational Methods for Potential Flow:
Panel methods.
8. Viscosity : Simple solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations.
9. Incompressible boundary layer equations: exact solutions.
10. Boundary layer over a flat plate
11. Pressure gradient effects.
12. Momentum integral approach: general discussion
13. Turbulence and its effects
14. Vortex-dominated flows
Flow over swept wings; spheres and bodies of revolution; pointed bodies at angle of attack.
15. Introduction to unsteady phenomena.
Course Coordinator: Dr. Narayanan M. Komerath, Professor