Currently viewing the tag: "Aircraft"

What Creates Lift – How Do Wings Work?

On October 10, 2015 · In Aerodynamics, Engineering, General Aerospace

How airplanes fly is 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 online and in textbooks. Just throughout my time in school and university, I have been confronted with several different explanations of how wings create […]

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Big Data in Aerospace

On March 26, 2015 · In General Aerospace, Technology

“Big data” is all abuzz in the media these days. As more and more people are connected to the internet and sensors become ubiquitous parts of daily hardware an unprecedented amount of information is being produced. Some analysts project 40% growth in data over the next decade, which means that in a decade 30 times the […]

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The Evolution of Airplanes

On December 9, 2014 · In Bio-mimicry, General Aerospace, History

Adrian Bejan is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University and as an offshoot from his thermodynamics research he has pondered the question why evolution exists in natural i.e. biological and geophysical, and man-made i.e. technological realms. To account for the progress of design in evolution Prof. Bejan conceived the constructal […]

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Loads Acting on Aircraft

On February 2, 2014 · In General Aerospace

The flight envelope of an aeroplane can be divided into two regimes. The first is rectilinear flight in a straight line, i.e. the aircraft does not accelerate normal to the direction of flight. The second is curvilinear flight, which, as the name suggests, involves flight in a curved path with acceleration normal to tangential flight […]

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Breguet Range Equation

On June 9, 2013 · In Aerodynamics

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 and go through the detailed derivation of the Breguet Range equation. The reason for doing this is that the maths is not very difficult but […]

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Bio-mimetic Drag Reduction – Part 2: Aero- and Hydrodynamics

On March 31, 2012 · In Aerodynamics, Bio-mimicry

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 possess a network of mechanosensors distributed over their bodies called the lateral line. The lateral line […]

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Bio-mimetic Drag Reduction – Part 1: Sensing

On March 27, 2012 · In Bio-mimicry

Fish have a remarkable ability to sense the flow conditions around their bodies and subsequently manipulate their swimming behaviour to achieve efficient locomotion [1 – 2]. It has been observed that dolphins and sharks use a network of mechanosensors on their skin to create a spatial image of the flow around them and […]

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