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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 ;).

So where do we need Aerodynamics, well well , to get flow properties inside

jet engines, to calculate Aerodynamic heating of a spacecraft ,to design
wind mills, or simply to get aerodynamic forces & moments on aircraft, we
gona need this baby. And these are just few examples there are many more
practical application of Aerodynamics.

There are two main branches of Aerodynamics

1) Internal Aerodynamics
2) External Aerodynamics

As the names explain themselves, internal Aerodynamics is related to flow

in ducts and in external Aerodynamics we are interested in flow going away
from bodies (like force and moment predictions on objects etc)

Like most branches of science Aerodynamics uses mathematical models &

equations to describe the real physical world so you better be well familiar
with Alpha, Beta Delta and gamma stuff before you learn Aerodynamics :D
rne of most famous equation in Aerodynamics is Navier-Stokes equation
which is believed to have the answer to all the flow problems (may it be
vortices, turbulence etc) and well in my opinion they should be, because
these two "Cheetaz"(Claude-Louis ‰
 and George Gabriel 
put
all the differentials known to human kind in this one equation :D

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)

So here is the Bottom line and my personal belief too.

AERODYNAMICS: "IT GIVES YOU WINGS"

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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