In response to a splashy but mathematically dubious paper that suggested long-established theories of lift were fundamentally incomplete, David Peters, the McDonnell Douglas Professor of Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, developed a fresh approach to reaffirm classical airfoil theory.
Despite the turbulence in theoretical aerodynamics, the fundamental principles ensuring your safe and smooth flight remain robust and reliable.
While Peters hasn’t yet solved the other issues plaguing airlines and making recent headlines, he and longtime collaborator Robert Ormiston, an emeritus scientist at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Aviation & Missile Center, employed Gauss’ principle of least constraint to address fundamental questions about the lift of a two-dimensional airfoil in ideal, incompressible fluid flow, a core concept in aerodynamics. Their results align with the classical, Newtonian derivation of aerodynamic theory for ideal fluid flow and reaffirm the longtime practices of aerospace engineers.
The findings of Peters and Ormiston, both fellows of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), were published Nov. 22 in the AIAA Journal.
Read more on the McKelvey Engineering website.
