Flying fish and diving birds often navigate the interface between water and air in their flight, but few studies have actually looked at the effects of this transition on lift. Keep reading
Tag: airfoil
Using Flow Separation to Fly
Fixed-wing flight typically favors the efficiency of long skinny wings, which is why so many aircraft have them. But for smaller flyers, like micro air vehicles (MAVs), short and stubby Keep reading
Stall with Pitching Foils
For a fixed-wing aircraft, stall – the point where airflow around the wing separates and lift is lost – is an enemy. It’s the precursor to a stomach-turning freefall for Keep reading
Plasma Flow Control
Engineers frequently face the challenge of maintaining control of air flow around an object across a wide range of conditions. After all, wind turbines and airplanes don’t always get to Keep reading
Reader Question: Lift
everyonelikespotatissallad asks: so, how is lift actually generated? i’ve been going through Anderson’s Introduction to Flight (6th Ed.) and while it offers the derivation of various equations very thoroughly, it barely Keep reading
Laser-Induced Fluorescence
One of the challenges of experimental fluid dynamics is capturing information about a flow that varies in three spatial dimensions and time. Experimentalists have developed many techniques over the years–some Keep reading
Transonic Flow
In the transonic speed regime the overall speed of an airplane is less than Mach 1 but some parts of the flow around the aircraft break the speed of sound. Keep reading
Flow Around a Complex Airfoil
Flow around an airfoil with a leading-edge slat is visualized above. At this Reynolds number, alternating periodic vortices are shed in its wake. Understanding how multi-element airfoils and control surfaces Keep reading
Stalling
[original media no longer available] At high angles of attack, the flow around the leading edge of an airfoil can separate from the airfoil, leading to a drastic loss of Keep reading
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
In recent years unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have grown in popularity for both military and civilian application and are shifting from a remotely controlled platform to autonomous control. Since no Keep reading