W.H. Mason
This is a random collection of curiosities that mainly come from questions raised by students (and others), who still ask me to come and talk about airplanes. Almost always they make me learn more about aerodynamics. Unfortunately, they mainly point to the uncertainty still associated with a lot of aerodynamics issues. They are in a strange order that correspond to the order in which they arose.
For the most part these are very brief. I’ve included 19 of the curiosities to date. The rest will be added during Summer 2018.
C1. Wing Stall Plot in Aero Books CL or CN?
C2. The Schlichting Polar for Go 623
C4. The so-called “straightline wrap” wing geometry
C5. The change of neutral point with sweep and aspect ratio VLM study
C6. Thin Airfoil Theory and the pressure distribution
C7. Flap Effectiveness from Thin Airfoil Theory related to stability
C8. Airfoil drag added to the induced drag for a drag polar with a 0012 airfoil
C9. Some Values of E
C10. Simple Sweep Theory
C11. Incidence distribution for unswept tapered wing with an elliptic spanload.
C12. Inger’s Compressibility correction
C13. Agility and the Static Margin
C14. Bell X-1B Wedges on the Ailerons.
C15. Oil Flow Invention Anecdote
C16. Comparison of Drag of KO and SH bodies
C17. Golf Balls — a Callaway advanced dimple comparison
C18. Some Skin Friction Drag Estimate Oddities
C19. Use of empirical/semi-empirical methods in computational design
C20. Subsonic parasite drag of airfoils with differing leading edge radii
C21. Comparison of some key airfoil geometric characteristics
C22. The curious case of xln(x) as x goes to 0.
C23. Recent peculiar idea of airfoil definition.
C24. Comparison of viscosity models
C25. The optimum flying wing configuration. Investigation into the controversy between J. V. Foa and W. R. Sears and I. L. Ashkenas.
Note: None of these curiosities and oddities are ever really finished. In just about every case there is room for further work. I welcome comments (and contributions).