AERO3260 Aerodynamics I

Reference materials

The School of Aerospace, Mechanical, & Mechatronic Engineering at The University of Sydney has a useful set of course notes, ‘Aerodynamics for Students’; see especially ‘Part 3: Aerodynamics’.

NACA Reports and Abbott & von Doenhoff's Theory of Wing Sections

The book Theory of Wing Sections by I. H. Abbott & A. E. von Doenhoff (Dover 1959, ISBN 0486605868) is highly recommended, both as a summary of the aerodynamics of wings and as a source of data on the NACA aerofoils. There are several copies in the University of Sydney Engineering Library, and the book is still in print and can be ordered from the publisher, or you can try to find it at BookFinder.com.

As the source of data on the NACA aerofoils, it incorporates an earlier technical report

I. H. Abbott, A. E. von Doenhoff, & L. S. Stivers, Jr. 1933 Summary of Airfoil Data, NACA Report No. 824.

which is now in the public domain. It's available from http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1945/naca-report-824/, but at 20M, the PDF is a large download.

Other classic NACA & NASA Reports on wing aerodynamics include:

L. Prandtl 1921 Applications of modern hydrodynamics to aeronautics, NACA Report No. 116. <PDF (3.7 M)>.
E. N. Jacobs, K. E. Ward, & R. M. Pinkerton 1933 The characteristics of 78 related airfoil sections from tests in the variable-density wind tunnel, NACA Report No. 460. < PDF (4.3 M)> (This report defines the NACA four-digit wing sections.)
A. Silverstein 1935 Scale effect on Clark Y airfoil characteristics from N.A.C.A. full-scale wind-tunnel tests. NACA Report No. 502. < PDF (1.1 M)>
E. N. Jacobs & R. M. Pinkerton 1936 Test in the variable-density wind tunnel of related airfoils having the maximum camber unusually far forward, NACA Report No. 537. < PDF (692 K)> (This report defines the NACA five-digit wing sections.)
R. F. Anderson 1936 Determination of the characteristics of tapered wings, NACA Report No. 572. <PDF (1.5 M)>.
J. C. Sivells & R. H. Neely 1947 Method for calculating wing characteristics by lifting-line theory using nonlinear section lift data. NACA Report No. 865. <PDF (1.5 M)>.
W. A. Stevens, S. H. Goradia, J. A. Braden 1983 Mathematical model for two-dimensional multi-component airfoils in viscous flow. NASA Contractor Report CR-1843.

See also the NASA Technical Report Server for other work.

Books

Other books include:

J. D. Anderson, Jr., 2001 Fundamentals of Aerodynamics, 3rd edn, McGraw-Hill. (Also 4th edn, 2007.)
H. Ashley & M. Landahl 1965 Aerodynamics of Wings and Bodies, Addison-Wesley. (Republished 1985 by Dover.)
J. J. Bertin 2002 Aerodynamics for Engineers, 4th edn, Prentice Hall.
H. Glauert 1947 The Elements of Aerofoil and Airscrew Theory, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press.
S. Goldstein (ed.) 1938 Modern Developments in Fluid Dynamics, Clarendon Press. (Republished by Dover in 1965.)
Th. von Kármán 1954 Aerodynamics: Selected Topics in Light of their Historical Development, Cornell University Press. (Republished by Dover.)
J. Katz & A. Plotkin 2001 Low-Speed Aerodynamics, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press.
A. M. Kuethe & Chuen-Yen Chow 1998 Foundations of Aerodynamics, 5th edn, Wiley.
L. M. Milne-Thomson 1973 Theoretical Aerodynamics, Dover. ISBN 048661980X. Find it at BookFinder.com
J. Moran 1984 An Introduction to Theoretical and Computational Aerodynamics, Wiley. (Republished 2003 by Dover.) Find it at BookFinder.com.
L. Prandtl & O. G. Tietjens 1957 Applied Hydro- and Aeromechanics, Dover. ISBN 048660375X.

Miscellany

Aerodynamics courses elsewhere:
UIUC Airfoil Coordinates Database
the Greek alphabet
Dryden X-Press
screenshot—computing a NACA 4-digit profile using a Gnumeric spreadsheet, following the equations from Jacobs, Ward, & Pinkerton (1933) (which is partially visible in the right of the shot) or Abbott & von Doenhoff (1959, pp. 112–114).
The spreadsheet can also be used to approximate the thin aerofoil theoretic zero-lift incidence α₀ and quarter-chord pitching moment coefficient C_{m_c/4} (screenshot).
‘On a perfect day, beware the vortex’, by E. Tadros & D. Smith (24 May 2005, Sydney Morning Herald), featuring quotes from Dr Peter Gibbens.
Computational aerodynamics:
- Miscellaneous aerodynamical programs written in GNU Octave and freely redistributable under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence (GPL).
- XFOIL:— a ‘subsonic aerofoil development system’
  Compiling XFOIL on Debian GNU/Linux: I found that I had to make the following changes to the configuration files.
  - In XFOIL694/plotlib/config.make, I had to comment out the lines
```
FC = g77-3
```
    and
```
CC = gcc3
```
  - In XFOIL694/bin/Makefile, I changed the line
```
PLTLIBS = -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lX11 -lblas
```
    to
```
PLTLIBS = -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lX11 -lblas-3
```
- AVL:— a vortex-lattice method code. To compile this, I commented out FC = ifort in plotlib/config.make and eispack/Makefile .
- Tornado:— a vortex-lattice program with flexible wake
- Gerris:— an Euler and Navier–Stokes solver
Conformal mapping:
- ‘More conformal mappings’, by O. S. Kerr of City University, London.
- A numerical conformal mapping program zipper, with Fortran and C source, written by D. E. Marshall of The University of Washington.
- the Wikipedia entry Conformal map. (As at Fri. 19 Aug. 2005, this is a bit terse; why not improve it?)
- the PlanetMath entry ‘conformal mapping’
- Stream-lines for the ideal flow over and around a wedge of angle βπ,
  
  using the mapping z=ζ^κ with κ= ²/_(2-β) for over and κ = ¹/_(2-β) for around and complex potential φ+iψ=z=ζ^κ in each case can be generated with Octave; for example, the code for the latter is
```
    beta = 1/6;

    x  = -2:0.1:2; y = 0:0.1:2;
    [X, Y] = meshgrid (x, y);
    z = transpose (X + 1i * Y);	# put z stream-lines in columns

    theta = mod (arg (z), 2*pi);	# cut along +ve, not -ve, real axis
    r = abs (z);

    kappa = 1 / (2 - beta);
    zeta = (r .^ (1/kappa)) .* exp (1i*theta/kappa);

    axis ("image"); axis ([-2, 2, -2, 2]); legend ("off");
    plot (real (zeta), imag (zeta))
    print ("-dpng", "wedge_around.png")
  
```
Flying in vee formation for birds and aircraft:
- P. B. S. Lissaman & C. A. Shollenberger 1970 Formation flight of birds. Science 168: 1003-1005.
- A. M. Kuethe & Chuen-Yen Chow 1998 Foundations of Aerodynamics, 5th edn, Wiley, pp. 213-215.
- NASA's Autonomous Formation Flight program:
  - K. Williams 1999 Formation flight learns form the birds. The Dryden X-Press 41(4), 26 Feb.
  - ‘Follow The Leader And Save Fuel’ 29 Oct. 2001
  - ‘NASA aircraft complete wingtip vortex study’ 17 Dec. 2001
- H. Weimerskirch, J. Martin, Y. Clerquin, P. Alexandre, & S. Jirakova 2001 Energy saving in flight formation. Nature 413:697-698.
Insect flight:
- Steve Yanoviak's work on gliding ants was reported by Elizabeth Svoboda in her article ‘Wingless gliders may reveal the origins of insect flight’ in the New York Times on 4 Apr. 2006.

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Last modified Tue. 29 May 2007 by Geordie McBain.