Geoff Spedding
Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
University of Southern California

Title: The Aerodynamics of Everything

Abstract:
Although we rarely pause to consider it, our life on earth is one where we are surrounded by aerodynamics puzzles and problems. The history of aviation has seen 100 years of spectacular successes in large-scale transport, the Airbus A380 being the recent most notable example. But aerodynamics involves much more than just large and fast transport aircraft, and while all kinds of cases of objects moving through air, or air moving past objects, are easily counted in large number, they are not always so easy to investigate using our standard mathematical tools and examples.

A case in point is the current research in designing and building small-scale flying machines, about the size of a human hand. They can carry a camera and transmit information from inaccessible and/or dangerous places, maneuvering through complex environments. Unfortunately, we now find that our usual analysis methods break down for the aerodynamics of even simple objects at this size and speed range. Overall, the specification sounds a lot like that of a bird, and perhaps we can learn from nature, where such problems have apparently been solved, at least to the satisfaction of the flyers themselves. This talk encourages basic questions about all flying things, and answers some of them.

About the Speaker:
Geoffrey Spedding is a Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California. He has a mixed background in both biology and engineering and enjoys working on problems that contain a bit of both. He also works on the detection of submarine tracks in work sponsored by the US Navy.