Chapter 11: Flow over bodies;

Lift and Drag

Eric G. Paterson
Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering
The Pennsylvania State University

Spring 2005

Note to Instructors
These slides were developed1, during the spring semester 2005, as a teaching aid for the
undergraduate Fluid Mechanics course (ME33: Fluid Flow) in the Department of Mechanical
and Nuclear Engineering at Penn State University. This course had two sections, one taught by
myself and one taught by Prof. John Cimbala. While we gave common homework and exams,
we independently developed lecture notes. This was also the first semester that Fluid
Mechanics: Fundamentals and Applications was used at PSU. My section had 93 students
and was held in a classroom with a computer, projector, and blackboard. While slides have
been developed for each chapter of Fluid Mechanics: Fundamentals and Applications, I
used a combination of blackboard and electronic presentation. In the student evaluations of my
course, there were both positive and negative comments on the use of electronic presentation.
Therefore, these slides should only be integrated into your lectures with careful consideration of
your teaching style and course objectives.
Eric Paterson
Penn State, University Park
August 2005

These slides were originally prepared using the LaTeX typesetting system (http://www.tug.org/)
and the beamer class (http://latex-beamer.sourceforge.net/), but were translated to PowerPoint for
wider dissemination by McGraw-Hill.
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ME33 : Fluid Flow

Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Objectives
Have an intuitive understanding of the various
physical phenomena such as drag, friction and
pressure drag, drag reduction, and lift.
Calculate the drag force associated with flow
over common geometries.
Understand the effects of flow regime on the
drag coefficients associated with flow over
cylinders and spheres
Understand the fundamentals of flow over
airfoils, and calculate the drag and lift forces
acting on airfoils.
ME33 : Fluid Flow

Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Motivation

ME33 : Fluid Flow

Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Motivation

ME33 : Fluid Flow

Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

External Flow
Bodies and vehicles in motion, or with flow over them,
experience fluid-dynamic forces and moments.
Examples include: aircraft, automobiles, buildings,
ships, submarines, turbomachines.
These problems are often classified as External Flows.
Fuel economy, speed, acceleration, maneuverability,
stability, and control are directly related to the
aerodynamic/hydrodynamic forces and moments.
General 6DOF motion of vehicles is described by 6
equations for the linear (surge, heave, sway) and
angular (roll, pitch, yaw) momentum.

ME33 : Fluid Flow

Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Fluid Dynamic Forces and Moments

Ships in waves present one of the most

difficult 6DOF problems.

ME33 : Fluid Flow

Airplane in level steady flight: drag = thrust

and lift = weight.

Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Drag and Lift

Fluid dynamic forces are
due to pressure and
viscous forces acting on
the body surface.
Drag: component
parallel to flow direction.
Lift: component normal
to flow direction.

ME33 : Fluid Flow

Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Drag and Lift

Lift and drag forces can be found by
integrating pressure and wall-shear stress.

ME33 : Fluid Flow

Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Drag and Lift

In addition to geometry, lift FL and drag FD forces
are a function of density and velocity V.
Dimensional analysis gives 2 dimensionless
parameters: lift and drag coefficients.

Area A can be frontal area (drag applications),

planform area (wing aerodynamics), or wettedsurface area (ship hydrodynamics).

ME33 : Fluid Flow

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Example: Automobile Drag

Scion XB

Porsche 911

CD = 1.0, A = 25 ft2, CDA = 25ft2

Drag force FD=1/2V2(CDA) will be ~ 10 times larger for Scion XB

CD = 0.28, A = 10 ft2, CDA = 2.8ft2

Source is large CD and large projected area

Power consumption P = FDV =1/2V3(CDA) for both scales with V3!

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Drag and Lift

For applications such as tapered wings,
CL and CD may be a function of span
location. For these applications, a local
CL,x and CD,x are introduced and the total
lift and drag is determined by integration
over the span L

ME33 : Fluid Flow

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Lofting a Tapered Wing

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Friction and Pressure Drag

Friction drag

Fluid dynamic forces are

comprised of pressure and
friction effects.
Often useful to decompose,
FD = FD,friction + FD,pressure
CD = CD,friction + CD,pressure

Pressure drag

This forms the basis of ship

model testing where it is
assumed that
CD,pressure = f(Fr)
CD,friction = f(Re)

Friction & pressure drag

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Streamlining
Streamlining reduces drag
by reducing FD,pressure, at
the cost of increasing
wetted surface area and
FD,friction.
Goal is to eliminate flow
separation and minimize
total drag FD
Also improves structural
acoustics since separation
and vortex shedding can
excite structural modes.
ME33 : Fluid Flow

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Streamlining

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Streamlining via Active Flow Control

Pneumatic controls
for blowing air from
slots: reduces drag,
improves fuel
economy for heavy
trucks (Dr. Robert
Englar, Georgia
Tech Research
Institute).
ME33 : Fluid Flow

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

CD of Common Geometries
For many geometries, total drag CD
is constant for Re > 104
CD can be very dependent upon
orientation of body.
As a crude approximation,
superposition can be used to add
CD from various components of a
system to obtain overall drag.
However, there is no mathematical
reason (e.g., linear PDE's) for the
success of doing this.

ME33 : Fluid Flow

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

CD of Common Geometries

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

CD of Common Geometries

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

CD of Common Geometries

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Flat Plate Drag

Drag on flat plate is solely due to friction created

by laminar, transitional, and turbulent boundary
layers.
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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Flat Plate Drag

Local friction coefficient
Laminar:
Turbulent:

Average friction coefficient

Laminar:
Turbulent:

For some cases, plate is long enough for turbulent flow,

but not long enough to neglect laminar portion

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Effect of Roughness
Similar to Moody
Chart for pipe flow
Laminar flow
unaffected by
roughness
Turbulent flow
significantly affected:
Cf can increase by 7x
for a given Re

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Cylinder and Sphere Drag

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Cylinder and Sphere Drag

Flow is strong function of
Re.
Wake narrows for
turbulent flow since TBL
(turbulent boundary layer)
is more resistant to
separation due to
adverse pressure
gradient.
sep,lam 80
sep,lam 140

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Effect of Surface Roughness

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Lift
Lift is the net force
(due to pressure and
viscous forces)
perpendicular to flow
direction.
Lift coefficient

A=bc is the planform

area
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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Computing Lift
Potential-flow approximation gives
accurate CL for angles of attack below
stall: boundary layer can be neglected.
Thin-foil theory: superposition of uniform
stream and vortices on mean camber
line.
Java-applet panel codes available online:
http://www.aa.nps.navy.mil/~jones/online_
tools/panel2/
Kutta condition required at trailing edge:
fixes stagnation pt at TE.

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Effect of Angle of Attack

Thin-foil theory shows that
CL2 for < stall
Therefore, lift increases
linearly with
Objective for most
applications is to achieve
maximum CL/CD ratio.
CD determined from windtunnel or CFD (BLE or NSE).
CL/CD increases (up to order
100) until stall.
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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Effect of Foil Shape

Thickness and
camber influences
pressure distribution
(and load distribution)
and location of flow
separation.
Foil database
compiled by Selig
(UIUC)
http://www.aae.uiuc.e
du/m-selig/ads.html
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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Effect of Foil Shape

Figures from NPS airfoil java
applet.
Color contours of
pressure field
Streamlines through
velocity field
Plot of surface pressure
Camber and thickness shown
to have large impact on flow
field.

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

End Effects of Wing Tips

Tip vortex created by
leakage of flow from highpressure side to lowpressure side of wing.
Tip vortices from heavy
aircraft persist far
downstream and pose
danger to light aircraft.
Also sets takeoff and
landing separation at
busy airports.

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

End Effects of Wing Tips

Tip effects can be
reduced by attaching
endplates or winglets.
Trade-off between
reducing induced
drag and increasing
friction drag.
Wing-tip feathers on
some birds serve the
same function.
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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Lift Generated by Spinning

Superposition of Uniform stream + Doublet + Vortex

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag

Lift Generated by Spinning

CL strongly depends on rate
of rotation.
The effect of rate of rotation
on CD is small.
Baseball, golf, soccer,
tennis players utilize spin.
Lift generated by rotation is
called The Magnus Effect.

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Chapter 11: Flow over bodies; lift and drag