Understanding Aerodynamics: Arguing from the Real Physics

Preface

This book is intended to help students and practicing engineers to gain a greater physical understanding of aerodynamics. It is not a handbook on how to do aerodynamics, but is motivated instead by the assumption that engineering practice is enhanced in the long run by a robust understanding of the basics.

A real understanding of aerodynamics must go beyond mastering the mathematical formalism of the theories and come to grips with the physical cause-and-effect relationships that the theories represent. In addition to the math, which applies most directly at the local level, intuitive physical interpretations and explanations are required if we are to understand what happens at the flowfield level. Developing this physical side of our understanding is surprisingly difficult, however. It requires navigating a conceptual landscape littered with potential pitfalls, and an acceptable path is to be found only through recognition and rejection of multiple faulty paths. It is really a process of argumentation, thus the “arguing” in the title. This kind of argumentation is underemphasized in other books, in which the path is often made to appear straighter and simpler than it really is. This book explores a broader swath of the conceptual landscape, including some of the false paths that have led to errors in the past, with the hope that it will leave the reader less likely to fall victim to misconceptions.

We'll encounter several instances of serious misinterpretations of mathematical ...