Unsteady effects occur in many natural and technical flows, for example around flapping wings or during aircraft gust encounters. If the unsteadiness is large, the resulting forces can be quite considerable. However, the exact physical mechanisms underlying the generation of unsteady forces are complex and their accurate prediction remains challenging. One strategy is to identify the dominant effects and describe these with simple analytical models, first proposed a hundred years ago. When used successfully, this approach has the advantage that it also gives us a conceptual understanding of unsteady fluid mechanics.
Unsteady effects occur in many natural and technical flows, for example around flapping wings or during aircraft gust encounters.
Professor Holger Babinsky
Holger Babinsky, Professor of Aerodynamics, recently gave a talk for the Cambridge Philosophical Society discussing Surging cylinders, flapping wings and gust encounters: Force production in unsteady flows.
In this lecture he explains some of these ideas and demonstrates how they can still be useful today. As a practical example, he shows how the forces experienced in a wing-gust encounter can be predicted – and how the predictions can be used to mitigate the gust effects. The lecture is illustrated with images and videos from simple, canonical, experiments.
Professor Babinsky is Head of the Energy, Fluid Mechanics and Turbomachinery Division as well as a Fellow of Magdalene College. His main areas of research are in the field of experimental aerodynamics and associated measurement techniques.
Apart from supersonic flows, which he has studied for more than 30 years, his research interests include the aerodynamics of micro-air vehicles, road vehicles, aircraft wings and engine inlets.
