Posted on 11/21/2010 4:41:47 PM PST by decimon
Airplanes do not look much like birds -- unless you were to imagine a really weird bird or a very strange plane -- but should they? This question is exactly what a pair of engineers in California and South Africa inadvertently answered recently when they set about re-thinking the ubiquitous tube-and-wings aircraft architecture from scratch in order to make airplanes more fuel efficient.
The modern airplane design works well, but from a fuel efficiency standpoint, could planes be designed more aerodynamically -- to lower drag and increase lift? Geoffrey Spedding, an engineer at the University of Southern California, and Joachim Huyssen at Northwest University in South Africa, felt they could in theory, but they lacked experimental evidence. Now they have it.
Spedding and Huyssen have made a simple modular aircraft in three configurations: a flying wing alone, then wings plus body, and then wings plus body and a tail. It turns out that they had independently re-designed a bird shape, but without specific reference to anything bird-like. They will present their experimental data with these three designs, today at the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting in Long Beach, CA.
If two J79s can power an F-4, it should only take one for a turkey.
Hate to think what your wind tunnel must look like.
Do they refer to that as an Aardvark? It figures that I would pull out a name randomly and have it turn out to be a real reference...;-)
I read that the Australians referred to their F-111s as Aardvarks.
siiighhhhhh.... a lot of the responses on this thread are lamentably predictable...
No.... I'm sure he meant "epidome."
"Epi" from the Greek for "upon;" and "dome" as in "bubble."
So birds would be "on the bubble" of aerodynamic styling.
;-)
Knew you'd say that.
:-P pthpbpbpbpbpbp
Of course we will be expected to contribute substantial foreign aid in the form of cash to the Muslim Muslum Saudi Arabs. It helps tremendously when you have your first cousin in the White House.
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