Fluid Flow & Aerodynamics
why things fly, and why the usual explanation is wrong
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Inverse design — the series

One essay so far on this idea, and more questions about it than one essay answers.
  1. The section the pressure asked for. The designed section over the one it started from, both drawn to their own chords. Asking for 28 per cent more speed over the forward 62 per cent of the upper surface produces a section 15.0 per cent thick against the original's 10, with the extra thickness forward and the camber changed — none of which was asked for, and all of which is what that pressure distribution is. The pale outline is the baseline. The one thing the method cannot be told is where along the chord any of it happens: the speed is prescribed against the circle's parameter, and where a given station ends up is an output of the same solve that produces the shape.

    Ask for the pressure, and see what shape that is

    A designer knows what the pressure distribution has to do long before knowing what shape does it. Running the problem that way round is possible, it is exact, and it refuses more asks than it grants.

    part 1 · inviscid

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