Understanding the major challenges in aeronautics today related to the urgent need for increased sustainability on the one hand, and often conflicting desired/necessary degree of mobility and energy demand. Understanding how this leads to an increased demand of flexibility in transport and energy availability in our future (smart) society, and to a wide diversity in type and scale of aircraft and wind turbines.
This course provides the essential physical background and aerodynamic knowledge and skills to be able to contribute to design and optimization of aircraft and wind turbines, where we particularly focus on the relatively low speed regime. The student will learn fundamental knowledge, analytical skills, and many insights that will help to critically evaluate designs, contribute to new designs, and critically evaluate results of numerical simulations. This general goal is subdivided in
- Physics of Aerodynamic Flows: The student will be able to derive the governing equations of fluid motion, describe the properties of atmospheric air and their relationships.
- Flow-Field Modeling: Based on the decomposition of the aerodynamic velocity field in associated source and vorticity fields the student can setup effective engineering models for the inviscid flow field by introducing idealizations and simplifications to the governing equations.
- Viscous Effects in Aerodynamic Flows: Students can model and quantify changes to an inviscid aerodynamic flow caused by the presence of viscous wall boundary layers and trailing wakes.
- Boundary Layer Analysis: By identifying relevant boundary layer parameters, deriving the governing equations, and formulating solution methods, the student can model the viscous flow in boundary layers. The student will gain knowledge and skills to understand laminar and turbulent boundary layer behavior and its connection to the inviscid flow region, viscous losses, and airfoil drag.
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The major challenge in aeronautics today is the urgent need for increased sustainability on the one hand, and the desired/necessary degree of mobility as well as an optimized flexible energy availability in future smart cities in our society on the other. For various reasons this leads to a wide diversity in type and scale of aircraft and wind turbines, ranging from relatively small UAV’s, single person VTOL’s, and small-scale wind turbines, to larger scale planes with distributed electric propulsion, integrated wing designs, and huge scale floating wind turbines at sea. No matter what the application is, the aerodynamics of the blades, wings, and control surfaces are key in safe operation, efficiency, and control.
This course provides students the knowledge, understanding, and mathematical tools to develop and apply engineering methods for aerodynamic analysis and design of low-speed aircraft and wind turbines. Students will gain a better understanding of the physics behind the mathematical formulations and obtain insight in the cause-and-effect relationships behind the theory.
One of the tools used to gain an intuitive feel for aerodynamic velocity fields is its description in terms of combined source and vorticity fields. This approach allows us to distinguish more clearly between inviscid and viscous flow regions in the flow domain and gives the opportunity for each domain to device specialized, practical engineering models for aerodynamic loads acting on UAV’s, aircraft, and wind turbines.
The course has a test after each of the topics and is concluded by a writing assignment and a presentation to the rest of the class.
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