Aerodynamics is the study of the motion of air, particularly when affected by a solid object, such as an airplane wing. It involves topics covered in the field of fluid dynamics and its subfield of gas dynamics, and is an important domain of study in aeronautics. The term aerodynamics is often used synonymously with gas dynamics, the difference being that "gas dynamics" applies to the study of the motion of all gases, and is not limited to air. The formal study of aerodynamics began in the modern sense in the eighteenth century, although observations of fundamental concepts such as aerodynamic drag were recorded much earlier. Most of the early efforts in aerodynamics were directed toward achieving heavier-than-air flight, which was first demonstrated by Otto Lilienthal in 1891. Since then, the use of aerodynamics through mathematical analysis, empirical approximations, wind tunnel experimentation, and computer simulations has formed a rational basis for the development of heavier-than-air flight and a number of other technologies. Recent work in aerodynamics has focused on issues related to compressible flow, turbulence, and boundary layers and has become increasingly computational in nature.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to analyze and solve problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate the free-stream flow of the fluid, and the interaction of the fluid with surfaces defined by boundary conditions. With high-speed supercomputers, better solutions can be achieved, and are often required to solve the largest and most complex problems. Ongoing research yields software that improves the accuracy and speed of complex simulation scenarios such as transonic or turbulent flows. Initial validation of such software is typically performed using experimental apparatus such as wind tunnels. In addition, previously performed analytical or empirical analysis of a particular problem can be used for comparison. A final validation is often performed using full-scale testing, such as flight tests.
In fluid dynamics, turbulence modeling is the construction and use of a mathematical model to predict the effects of turbulence. Turbulent flows are commonplace in most real-life scenarios. In spite of decades of research, there is no analytical theory to predict the evolution of these turbulent flows. The equations governing turbulent flows can only be solved directly for simple cases of flow. For most real-life turbulent flows, CFD simulations use turbulent models to predict the evolution of turbulence. These turbulence models are simplified constitutive equations that predict the statistical evolution of turbulent flows.
Bram van Leer is Arthur B. Modine Emeritus Professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. He specializes in Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), fluid dynamics, and numerical analysis. His most influential work lies in CFD, a field he helped modernize from 1970 onwards. An appraisal of his early work has been given by C. Hirsch (1979)
Guy Antony Jameson, FRS, FREng is Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University. Jameson is known for his pioneering work in the field of computational fluid dynamics. He has published more than 300 scientific papers in a wide range of areas including computational fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, and control theory.
The Aeronautical/Astronautical Research Laboratory (AARL) is an aerospace engineering research facility operated by Ohio State University. It is the principal research facility of the College of Engineering's Department of Aerospace and Astronautical Engineering. It is located on the grounds of Ohio State University Airport, in Columbus, Ohio.
The viscous vortex domains (VVD) method is a mesh-free method of computational fluid dynamics for directly numerically solving 2D Navier-Stokes equations in Lagrange coordinates. It doesn't implement any turbulence model and free of arbitrary parameters. The main idea of this method is to present vorticity field with discrete regions (domains), which travel with diffusive velocity relatively to fluid and conserve their circulation. The same approach was used in Diffusion Velocity method of Ogami and Akamatsu, but VVD uses other discrete formulas
SU2 is a suite of open-source software tools written in C++ for the numerical solution of partial differential equations (PDE) and performing PDE-constrained optimization. The primary applications are computational fluid dynamics and aerodynamic shape optimization, but has been extended to treat more general equations such as electrodynamics and chemically reacting flows. SU2 supports continuous and discrete adjoint for calculating the sensitivities/gradients of a scalar field.
In computational fluid dynamics, the k–omega (k–ω) turbulence model is a common two-equation turbulence model, that is used as an approximation for the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations (RANS equations). The model attempts to predict turbulence by two partial differential equations for two variables, k and ω, with the first variable being the turbulence kinetic energy (k) while the second (ω) is the specific rate of dissipation (of the turbulence kinetic energy k into internal thermal energy).
Elaine Surick Oran is an American physical scientist and is considered a world authority on numerical methods for large-scale simulation of physical systems. She has pioneered computational technology to solve complex reactive flow problems, unifying concepts from science, mathematics, engineering, and computer science in a new methodology. An incredibly diverse range of phenomena can be modeled and better understood using her techniques for numerical simulation of fluid flows, ranging from the tightly grouped movements of fish in Earth's oceans to the explosions of far-flung supernovae in space. Her work has contributed significantly to the advancement of the engineering profession.
Transition modeling is the use of a model to predict the change from laminar and turbulent flows in fluids and their respective effects on the overall solution. The complexity and lack of understanding of the underlining physics of the problems makes simulating the interaction between laminar and turbulent flow to be difficult and very case specific. Transition does have the wide range of turbulence options available for most computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applications for the following reasons:
George Em Karniadakis is a professor of applied mathematics at Brown University. He is a Greek-American researcher who is known for his wide-spectrum work on high-dimensional stochastic modeling and multiscale simulations of physical and biological systems, and is a pioneer of spectral/hp-element methods for fluids in complex geometries, general polynomial chaos for uncertainty quantification, and the Sturm-Liouville theory for partial differential equations and fractional calculus.
Tumkur Seetharamaiah Prahlad is an Indian aerospace scientist and the former director of the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), Bengaluru, known as a specialist in Aerodynamics and Aerospace Design. His contributions are reported in Indian civil aircraft development programmes of Hansa and NAL Saras and light combat aircraft development programme. The Government of India awarded him the civilian honour of the Padma Shri in 2004, The same year, he received the H. K. Firodia Award from H. K. Firodia Memorial Foundation.
Mujeeb R. Malik is a Pakistani born American aerospace engineer serving as Senior Aerodynamicist at NASA Langley Research Center. He is known for his research in boundary layer stability, laminar-turbulent transition, computational methods and aerodynamic simulations. He was the architect of CFD Vision 2030, a NASA-sponsored study to advance the state-of-the-art of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) by exploiting high performance computing and modern validation experiments.
Paul Andrews Libby was a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, San Diego, a specialist in the field of combustion and aerospace engineering.
A blade vortex interaction (BVI) is an unsteady phenomenon of three-dimensional nature, which occurs when a rotor blade passes within a close proximity of the shed tip vortices from a previous blade. The aerodynamic interactions represent an important topic of investigation in rotorcraft research field due to the adverse influence produced on rotor noise, particularly in low speed descending flight condition or maneuver, which generates high amplitude impulsive noise.
Guru Guruswamy is an American engineer working as Principal Scientist at Ames Research Center since 1988. He pioneered research in the area of computational aeroelasticity that involves Unsteady Aerodynamics, Finite Element Methods, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Parallel Computing and Problem Solving Environment. His innovative research was utilized in the first commercial 3-D computational aeroelasticity software developed by a major aerospace industry. The aeroelasticity legend Holt Ashley extensively referred to Guruswamy's research in his classical review paper. In 1988 he demonstrated the unique use of Transonic Small Perturbation based CFD for designing active controls to increase the safety of aircraft. It was followed by a break through development of Euler flow equations based Computational Aeroelasticy. It was cited by another Aeroelasticity legend John Dugundji of MIT as an important milestone in Aeroelasticity. A google search shows about 150 researchers took advantage Guruswamy's work based on the Euler equations for follow-up developments.
Simcenter STAR-CCM+ is a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based simulation software developed by Siemens Digital Industries Software. Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows the modeling and analysis of a range of engineering problems involving fluid flow, heat transfer, stress, particulate flow, electromagnetics and related phenomena.
Carlos E. S. Cesnik is a Brazilian-American aerospace engineer, academic, and author. He is the Clarence L. (Kelly) Johnson Collegiate Professor of Aerospace Engineering and the founding Director of the Active Aeroelasticity and Structures Research Laboratory at the University of Michigan. He also directs the Airbus-Michigan Center for Aero-Servo-Elasticity of Very Flexible Aircraft (CASE-VFA).
Lyle Norman Long is an academic, and computational scientist. He is a Professor Emeritus of Computational Science, Mathematics, and Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University, and is most known for developing algorithms and software for mathematical models, including neural networks, and robotics. His research has been focused in the fields of computational science, computational neuroscience, cognitive robotics, parallel computing, and software engineering.
