von Karman Institute Lecture Series and Events

BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER: THE INTELLECTUAL BREAKTHROUGHS IN AERODYNAMICS THAT MADE IT POSSIBLE

John D. Anderson, Jr.
Curator for Aerodynamics
National Air and Space Museum
Smithsonian Institution
and
Professor Emeritus, Aerospace Engineering University of Maryland

VKI Colloquium
Friday January 20th, 3:30PM
VKI Conference Room

On October 14, 1947, the small but beautiful Bell X-1 became the first piloted airplane to fly faster than sound, with Captain Chuck Yeager at the controls. This flight was a breakthrough in the history of the airplane; Yeager and the X-1 had broken the “sound barrier”. But this flight was made possible by three centuries of breakthroughs in the intellectual understanding of high-speed aerodynamics. This presentation deals with these breakthroughs. We will see how our understanding of sound waves and shock waves evolved, and how the mysteries of high-speed aerodynamics were slowly revealed, allowing people and flying machines to finally achieve what was considered by some to be impossible – flying faster than the speed of sound.  The roles of science, engineering science, and engineering will be discussed.  This presentation is for a general audience as well as for engineers and scientists. It tells one of the most exciting stories in the history of fluid dynamics and aerodynamics.

Location : von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics

free entrance