The mysteries of aerodynamic lift
scientificamerican.com
The mysteries of aerodynamic lift
1–10 of 178 posts
Re: The mysteries of aerodynamic lift
#2I thought it was a combination of newtons third law and Bernoulli's principle, the wings are hitting the air and the air exerts equal force in the opposite direction, Bernoulli's principle allows this equal opposite force to provide easier lift.
Re: The mysteries of aerodynamic lift
#3I thought it was a combination of newtons third law and Bernoulli's principle, the wings are hitting the air and the air exerts equal force in the opposite direction, Bernoulli's principle allows this equal opposite force to provide easier lift.
Wright you are.
Re: The mysteries of aerodynamic lift
#4So, since the title is a bit baity: On a mathematical level we understand and have consensus; but the "dirtiness" of practical applications of mathematics makes it a bit more complicated to explain fully.
Re: The mysteries of aerodynamic lift
#5I'm tired of this headline, its an oversimplification.
We absolutely DO understand how and why they stay in the air, we just don't have the hard numbers behind it.
Re: The mysteries of aerodynamic lift
#6Needlessly click-baity article title.
TLDR: We don't have a full solution that models flight.
We also don't have a full understanding of how bicycles work.
Re: The mysteries of aerodynamic lift
#7During my plane flights I passed the time rediscovering the equations of lift.
The physical intuition I’ve found, is for plane flight, the plane must move faster in the direction parallel to the ground than the time it takes for those air molecules under the plane to move away and deform around the wing at some average velocity. In this manner, the plane can push off those air molecules as they’re unable to move out of the way quick enough to escape the force. Similar behavior to skipping a stone on water. For lift, you apply torque on the wing by changing the angle of attack. This also leads to some interesting ideas on wind.
Re: The mysteries of aerodynamic lift
#8I suspect if you made a wing out of a flat piece of material, tilted at the appropriate angle of attack, it would be sufficient to fly a plane. It just wouldn't be optimized at all.
Really, you need full Navier-Stokes behavior to explain all the forces acting on the wing. Bernoulli doesn't generalize to a full vector field, it's a simplified version of Navier-Stokes. Calling in the big guns doesn't make for an easy discussion.
(mechanical engineer, I figure I had like 1/3 of the fluids classes the real aerospace guys get).
Re: The mysteries of aerodynamic lift
#9[deleted]
Re: The mysteries of aerodynamic lift
#10Needlessly click-baity article title. TLDR: We don't have a full solution that models flight. We also don't have a full understanding of how bicycles work.
> TLDR: We don't have a full solution that models flight.
We do, actually. It's just hard to explain.