Introduction

This textbook is designed to support both instructors and students for an effective knowledge transfer with enhanced discussions and activities with emphasis of developing fundamentals of engineering.  Engineering  classrooms can be more interactive in exchanging discussions and collaborative working.  Enhancing more interactive learning is the foundational approach of the Engineering Workbook Series textbook development project, and this is the first textbook of the series.  It is encouraged for both instructors and students to fully embrace the concept of interactive engineering learning with excitement of discovering something new in more down-to-earth and more practical manner.

Aerodynamics is a special branch of the broader study area of basic engineering science, that is fluid mechanics.  Therefore, the fundamental masterly understanding of fluid mechanics (i.e., physics of fluid kinematics, statics, and dynamics) is essential to understand aerodynamics.  In order to apply mathematical models (i.e., computer simulations for aerodynamics) to analyze flow field, it is necessary to introduce the following two important constraints in aerodynamics for the purpose of simplification in mathematical analysis:

(i) The first underlying assumption is that the fluid is a continuum (means that the molecular level physics are all intentionally ignored).  This assumption will introduce a hypothetical (non-physical) concept of air particles (i.e., infinitesimally small element of air) that will, as a whole, define a physical flow field to represent the basic physics of a given flow field of air.  In this assumption, many (very many) small (very small) air particles are homogenously distributed throughout a given flow field of air without any chemical component change.

(ii) The second assumption is that the working fluid is a standard air (unlike a liquid, air is an inherently compressible type of fluid and can be modeled by basic gas physics, including the ideal gas law).

There are 4 main parts in this textbook:

Part I (Unit A): Fundamental Concept introduces some fundamental ideas of aerodynamics, develops a standard atmosphere model, discusses basics of aerodynamics in some governing principles of physics, defines how to determine airspeed of aircraft, and discovers how to determine aerodynamic forces and moments developed on a wing of an aircraft.

Part II (Unit B): Theory of Aerodynamics reviews some fundamental mathematics required for aerodynamics, applies mathematics to represent flow field physics, solves some elementary flow field simulations in Laplace’s equation, and implements how mathematical solutions can be used to analyze flow field of an aircraft.

Part III (Unit C): Aerodynamics of Airfoils introduces 2-D airfoil aerodynamics with some mathematical methods (i.e., computer simulations for aerodynamics for a cross-section of an aircraft), including considerations of high-speed (compressibility) effects.

Part IV (Unit D): Applied Aerodynamics applies 3-D finite wing aerodynamics with some mathematical methods (i.e., computer simulations for aerodynamics for a wing of an aircraft), including the boundary layer models and considerations of high-speed (compressibility) effects.