Timeline for How complete is our understanding of lift?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 3, 2023 at 8:52 | comment | added | wbeaty | @DKNguyen actually, just in the 1990s was insect flight finally understood, when a major mystery was solved by C. Ellington's team at Cambridge, using a "Robo-moth," large flapping wings to duplicate Hawkmoth flight. They discovered a new unsuspected leading-edge vortex, produced by interaction between insect body and multiple wing-flaps, which never showed up in earlier work. Calculations gave insufficient lift to explain moth flight. Wind tunnels, rather than NS equations, solved the mystery. Only NOW can we do the proper calcs. google.com/search?q=ellington+hawkmoth+robo | |
| Jan 20, 2022 at 15:22 | comment | added | slebetman | @DKNguyen The Navier-Stokes equations work perfectly well to simulate the flight of hummingbirds and insects. It even works well to describe smaller things like the movement of blood in arteries. However until recently (around the 1990s) we didn't have computers fast enough to do the calculations that simulate hummingbird flight (especially since the entire system depends a lot on turbulence and vortices) | |
| Oct 7, 2020 at 22:03 | comment | added | DKNguyen | I'm surprised there are so many answers saying we understand it very well when we are having trouble with things at smaller scales such as hummingbirds and especially insects. | |
| Oct 8, 2015 at 8:15 | comment | added | Sanchises | +1 for adressing the difference between "having a complete theory" on one side and "having an intuitive understanding" on the other. | |
| Oct 7, 2015 at 3:55 | history | answered | slebetman | CC BY-SA 3.0 |