Doug McLean | Common Misconceptions in Aerodynamics

Doug McLean, retired Boeing Technical Fellow, discusses several examples of erroneous ways of looking at phenomena in aerodynamics, that have either taken hold in parts of the aerodynamics community or have been expressed in books or papers by other authors. These examples are mostly about interpreting the basic physics of the phenomenon in question.

Most are from his book Understanding Aerodynamics - Arguing from the Real Physics, but a couple of them are new. Examples will include ways of explaining the lift of a wing or the thrust of a rocket in intuitive physical terms, interpretations of the induced drag of a wing and how tip devices such as winglets work, widespread misunderstandings of how lift is manifested in the global flowfield around a wing, the common pitfalls of discussing pressure drag and thrust, and common misunderstandings of the accuracy of CFD.

Although these topics involve a wide variety of physical phenomena, Dr. McLean will attempt to identify the common threads. An appropriate subtitle for this talk would be An Argumentative Aerodynamicist Gets Old and Cranky and Takes Issue with Just About Everyone.

Sponsored by the Aerospace Engineering Department (http://www.engin.umich.edu/aero) as part of the 585 Lecture Series.

Speaker Bio:
Doug McLean is a retired Boeing Technical Fellow. At Boeing, he worked on CFD codes for transonic wing design, codes for airplane spanload optimization including the effect of structural weight, novel wingtip devices to reduce induced drag, transonic airfoil technology, swept-wing laminar flow, turbulent skin-friction reduction, and pressure-sensitive paint. He received a B.A. in physics from the University of California at Riverside in 1965 and a Ph.D. in Aerospace and Mechanical Sciences from Princeton University in 1970. He is the author of Understanding Aerodynamics - Arguing from the Real Physics (Wiley, 2012), which is intended to promote greater physical understanding of aerodynamics. He has designed his own model airplanes since he was a youngster and held a national record in the Pennyplane class of indoor rubber-powered models.