AE 2020 :Low Speed Aerodynamics

Catalog Description: AE 2020: Low speed Aerodynamics. 3-0-3 

Basic results, conservation laws, potential, airfoil and wing analysis. Boundary layers on plates and airfoils. Pressure gradients. Introduction to turbulence and vortex-dominated flows.

Text: 	J. Anderson, Fundamentals of Aerodynamics, McGraw –Hill, Inc.  Fourth Edition 
	Web Site: http://www.ae.gatech.edu/~lsankar/AE2020
Supplementary notes supplied by the instructor.

Instructor:  	
L. N. Sankar, Regents Professor and Associate Chair, Room 360, School of AE
	e-mail: lsankar@ae.gatech.edu   Phone: 404-894-3014
Office Hours: Instructor is available by appointment.

Grading Policy:

Grades will be based on attendance (very important), two quizzes (25% each), homework (25%) and final exam (25%).  Exams will be closed book and notes, unless otherwise notified. 
	A: 	Average score of 90% or above
	B:	between 80% and 89%
	C:	between 70% and 79%
	D:	between 50% and 69%
	F:	below 50%

Learning Objectives
1. How aerodynamic lift, drag and pitching moment are generated, and how they act. 
2. Basic physical approach to describing fluid dynamics. 
3. Potential flow concept to describe and predict aerodynamics.
4. Thin-airfoil theory and genesis of the results of 2-D incompressible results. 
5. Finite-Wing effects and their modeling.
6. Lifting-line approach for calculating lift and induced drag on wings. 
7. Boundary-layer concept for modeling the effects of viscosity. 
8. Simple models of the boundary layer.
9. Physical concepts of turbulence and its effects. 

Prerequisites
1. Newton's laws of motion
2. Basic Trigonometry
3. Concept of scalars and vectors: dot products, cross-products, curl.
4. Partial derivatives; contour, surface and volume integrals. 
5. Computer literacy for problem-solving using spreadsheets, making 2-D plots
6. Chemistry: perfect gas equation, Avogadro's Number. 

Lecture Topics
1. Conservation Laws:  Laws of physics: Mass, momentum & energy conservation. Simplifications. Relating line, area and volume integrals.  Incompressible & steady flows. Euler's equation, Bernoulli's equation, pressure coefficient.
 
2. Fluid Motion: Streamlines, translation, dilatation, rotation and vorticity, strain, viscosity, circulation

3. Potential Flow Method: Velocity potential; Laplace equation; superposition of solutions, boundary conditions. Elementary solutions: uniform flow, 
source/sink, doublet, vortex, lift and drag coefficients.

4. Airfoils: Specifying circulation and the Kutta condition. Airfoil shape. Vortex sheet. Thin airfoil theory, lift curve slope, center of pressure, aerodynamic center. 

5. Computational Methods for Potential Flow: Panel methods. 

6. Wings:  Observed characteristics, trailing vortices, vortex sheet, starting vortex, downwash, induced drag. Vortex filament and Biot-Savart Law, Helmholtz's vortex theorems. Prandtl's lifting line theory, Glauert solution, elliptical lift distribution, induced drag. 

7. Viscosity : Simple solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations. 

8. Incompressible boundary layer equations: exact solutions.

9. Boundary layer over a flat plate

10. Pressure gradient effects. 

11. Momentum integral approach: general discussion 

12. Turbulence and its effects