Procrastination - Isn't Aeroelasticity Fun?

Wow, it's really been a long day at school. Left the house at 20 to 9 this morning, and it is getting on towards 9pm. I won't leave campus until around 11. I hate these late Ultimate (Essentially football with a Frisbee, without the tackling) games.

I should really be working on my Aeroelasticity assignment, but my brain hurts a little too much for that right now. For those of you not in the know (which pretty much includes me), aeroelasticity combines solid mechanics (deformation of structures), dynamics (vibration analysis) and aerodynamics to study how an airplane's wing reacts to the air flowing over it.

A little intro to airplanes (simplified). When an airfoil (wing) moves through the air, kind of like sticking your hand out the car window, if it is flat, then it just slices through the air, but if you lift the leading edge up a little bit (increase the angle of attack), then through a bunch of fluid dynamics (thanks in part to both Newton and Bernoulli), you get lift. Now in an airplane wing, this causes the plane to lift off the ground, but also causes the wing to twist, increasing the angle of attack even more and then increasing the lift. This just keeps going and going until the the stiffness of the wing balances out the torque from the lifting force. If the force is too big, it'll rip the wing right off.

This, as you can imagine, is not good.

So anyways, I am supposed to be working on an assignment looking at the vibration caused by this aeroelastic effect. I just don't feel like doing it so I am writting this, trying to kill some time.

I am really looking forward to ultimate, hopefully I can wake up a little bit. It really is a lot of running.

I like having that Statcounter. A few (not many) people, other than me, have come by. If you are reading this far, leave a comment, I want to know what people think of my fairly young blog. I wonder how long I can keep this up. I guess that depends on if I develop an audience or something. I should try to come up with some sort of theme that will attract people. Maybe if i get more opinionated and cynical, then people will want to hear what I have to say. I'm sure some days I will be more pissed off than others.

Anyways, maybe I can get some work done before I go grab a bite.
Thats another don't go as long as I have today without eating much, maybe thats why i am so tired.

Later