Breguet Range Equation
There is a saying that your audience will halve for every equation you put in a piece of writing. Well, in this case I am going to make an exception…
The Atmosphere
Understanding the details of the atmosphere is critical for manned flight since it provides the medium through which the aircraft moves. The lift provided by the wings and drag experienced…
Operational Requirements
Every aircraft has a certain operational environment, including aspects of flight and ground operations, that it is designed to serve in throughout its lifetime. For example the operational requirements of a fighter…
The Navier-Stokes Equation
The name we use for our little blue planet “Earth” is rather misleading. Water makes up about 71% of Earth’s surface while the other 29% consists of continents and islands.…
What Creates Lift – How Do Wings Work?
How airplanes fly is one one of the most fundamental questions in aerospace engineering. Given its importance to flight, it is surprising how many different and oftentimes wrong explanations are being perpetuated…
Control and Stability of Aircraft
One of the key factors in the Wright brothers’ achievement of building the first heavier-than-air aircraft was their insight that a functional airplane would require a mastery of three disciplines: 1. Lift 2. Propulsion…
Bio-mimetic Drag Reduction – Part 1: Sensing
Fish have a remarkable ability to sense the flow conditions around their bodies and subsequently manipulate their swimming behaviour to achieve efficient locomotion . It has been observed that dolphins…
Bio-mimetic Drag Reduction – Part 2: Aero- and Hydrodynamics
Part 1 of this blog series outlined the different sensing mechanisms that aquatic animals possess to create spatial images of the flow fields around them. In summary fish were found to…
Bio-mimetic Drag Reduction – Part 3: Morphing
In the previous two posts of this blog series I introduced the different sensing mechanism that aquatic animals possess to create spatial images of the largely turbulent flow fields around them. Flow sensing…
Dreams of Flight
Since the early days of human intelligence the dream of flying and the idea that we are not alone in this universe has possessed the human mind. In the second…
