BIG Breakthru - aerodynamics

[ldlcholester]

Check out dailytech.com /MIT. Title is "Breakthrough of the decade".

Expansion of Ludwig Prandtl's 1904 equations of fluid flow by MIT engineer. This is major, major.

It's already survived peer review and will undergo further verification.

As you know, all flight is described by 2nd order partial differential equations. More broadly, any liquid or gas flow around a solid object is thusly described.

This means that the air flow around a car making a turn and accelerating can now be modeled exactly. Or an aircraft. We could never do this before. We could only do approximations using CFD. (Computational Fluid Dynamics)

The equations of flight were pretty much settled in 1911 by Professor George Hartley Bryan. These are the equations used by Boeing and others today.

Now it's a new game. The potential is enormous. Fuel savings etc.

Every aviation enthusiast should be excited about this.

[NMLW]

Thanks for the news. I'll be watching closely for the related flightsim addon.

[angels355]

I'll check it out. Sounds like awesome news. I was previously interested in computational fluid dynamics. My buddy a PhD in aerodynamics was telling me that we could only predict with precision the air flow around a BB, everything else is just an approximation.

What would be cool is to be able to make exacting designs of transonic propeller blades like for Reno racing, and turbofan front blades.

[ldlcholester]

This has widespread applications. Aircraft, cars, golfballs, drones, blood flow, hydraulics, pneumatics, etc. Weather modelling,

Since fluid flow (ie. gases & liquids) is as fundamental as gravity in everyday life.

The astounding thing is that it has been studied since 1900 by geniuses and only now comes the solution. An indicator of how difficult the problem is. Similar to those unresolved math problems. Fermat, etc.

Maybe we now can model bumblebee or hummingbird flight.

As I said - If you want to understand flight, you have to understand partial differential equations and fluid flow.

[azur]

link...
http://www.dailytech.com/MIT+Discove...ticle13067.htm

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/fluid-flow-0924.html

and if you have access to the journals, the paper is: Unsteady flow separation on slip boundaries (Lekien & Haller)

[angels355]

Do you think that these applications would be good candidates for supercomputing as plasma physics is? Do you think I could put up a sign, "Haver supercomputer, will travel!"?

My HAL 9000 has not even come close to being networked together plus cluster software. It needs more repair and building, and so far have just been watching dvd's and running flight simulator. In the past I've had eight flight simulators running at the same time, after building and repairs it could go a lot higher but I don't want to waste electricity.

[sandgate]

Check out dailytech.com /MIT. Title is "Breakthrough of the decade".

Expansion of Ludwig Prandtl's 1904 equations of fluid flow by MIT engineer.
As you know, all flight is described by 2nd order partial differential equations. More broadly, any liquid or gas flow around a solid object is thusly described.

We could only do approximations using CFD. (Computational Fluid Dynamics)

Mods! Mods! Idlcholester is posting in a foreign language...is this allowed? Wass e sayin..wass e sayin!

[ldlcholester]

If it confuses you go to the website and the two good links provided and read about it. It's about flight. If your still confused then get a different hobby.

[loki]

I think he was joking....

[NikeHerk67]

Personally, after reading about all the literature I could find on this, I think many are expecting too much here. A 5% increase in any fuel economy or performance would be far above expectations as I see it. Besides, I'm always suspicious when academia is looking for big Government contracts.

Now, all seriousness aside. (humor)

Basically I don't see anything really changing. For aircraft, perhaps a more accurate mathematical solution on the drawing board would simply reduce fine tuning time in the wind tunnel.

For automobiles, correct me if I'm wrong. In the future we're all going to be driving cars that are round and have a nipple on the front and one on the rear.
Ah, Now at last, we find that Clem, Henry, J.M. Peter and Jacob Studebaker were much before their time.

As for golf balls, they probably won't putt too well.