DAVE DARMOFAL: Welcome to 16.101x,
Introduction to Aerodynamics.
Hi, I'm Dave Darmofal.
I'm a professor in the Department of
Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT.
ALEJANDRA URANGA: I am Alejandra Uranga,
a research engineer at MIT.
CHAD LIBERMAN: And I'm Chad Lieberman,
postdoctoral associate in the
Department of Aeronautics
and Astronautics at MIT.
DAVE DARMOFAL: We thought we'd
take a second and explain
what 16.101x is about.
And what better way to do that than
with a picture of an airplane?
I'm going to take a slice through
that airplane's wing to
produce an airfoil section.
And you may have noticed that we have
an airfoil section in our logo.
The blue lines in this logo
are called streamlines.
They are the key to understanding how
lift is generated on an aircraft.
And what more important thing to know
than why does an airplane fly?
Also in this image is a shock wave.
A shock wave is the region where the
flow rapidly decelerates from
supersonic to subsonic speeds.
It increases the drag significantly and
limits the flight speed that can
be achieved in an efficient
manner of an airplane.
Also in this image is
the boundary layer.
The boundary layer region is
where friction forces act.
And those friction forces cause
a significant amount of
the drag on an airplane.
Now, another part of the flow is the
wing tip vortex, over here in this
purple line I've drawn in.
The wing tip vortex has
a lot of energy in it.
And we'll tell you in 16.101x how the
energy in that wake is related to the
drag on an airplane.
Unfortunately, there's not too
much you can do about it.
Any airplane generating lift also
creates a wake with this energy, and
therefore drag.
Some of the objectives we have for
you will be for you to develop an
understanding of the fundamental
concepts of aerodynamics, things like
boundary layers, wakes, shock
waves, et cetera.
We also would like you to develop an
understanding of the theoretical
models used for quantitative
aerodynamic analysis.
In order to do that, there are
some prerequisites, though.
We think you should know some vector
calculus, something about differential
equations, and some mechanics, like
you'd learn in a first physics class.
If you don't feel comfortable with all
of the things I'm writing on the
right-hand side, you probably should
not take this class yet, but first
brush up on your vector calculus,
differential equations, and mechanics.
Another thing we think would it'd be
useful for you to know is introductory
gas dynamics, in particular,
control volumes.
If you don't know that yet we will be
providing you with some materials,
though, to brush up.
If all that sounds great, we'd
love to have you join us
September 9 in 16.101x.
