Hi Russ,
It's Peter Lissamen, and there is a great deal about him on google, and
numerous references.
Best wishes ... Dean Gerber
--- On Sat, 5/7/11, Russ Abbott <russ.abb...@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Russ Abbott <russ.abb...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] VORTICAL FLOWS and LIFT
To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <friam@redfish.com>
Cc: plissa...@comcast.net
Date: Saturday, May 7, 2011, 6:24 PM
Right. Google doesn't know anything about it.
Your search - Plessaman "The Meaning of Lift" - did not match any documents.
Suggestions:Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.Try more general keywords.Try fewer keywords.
-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Google voice: 747-999-5105
blog: http://russabbott.blogspot.com/
vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
_____________________________________________
On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 4:02 PM, Grant Holland <grant.holland...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Peter - Fascinating.
I too vote that you make available to the FRIAM alias your
referenced paper so that we all can get the benefit of you wisdom on
this.
Grant
On 5/7/11 1:22 PM, plissa...@comcast.net wrote:
The videos are wonderful, and I thank Nick, and
agree with his opinion. As for the Theory of Tornadoes,
it seems that to date it's literally a case of "God only
knows"! But mebbe Friam, too. I have 1/2 century
background teaching grad fluid mechanics at Caltech,
Stanford, and USC and have done a lot of meteorological
field work, but really wouldn't try to discuss the
subject. I jus' dunno.
One should remember that what one sees is a LOT
less than what one gets, because that's where the tracer
happens to be. This I expressed vividly to my students
in auto design, when we took pix of airflow near bluff
vehicles on test tracks in the Mohave Desert. A'course
there is a huge billowing plume that presages before,
and persists long after the vehicle is over the
horizon. I remind them that it was not the "dust" doing
this, but the air, and an identical disturbance
occurs invisibly whenever a body passes through air. To
paraphrase, "its bite is just as keen, although it is
not seen"! Makes one take car streamlining seriously. I
actually hold patents on one of those drag shield things
that goes on the cab of a tractor-trailer rig, that was
developed on NSF funding at our test base near El Mirage
in the Mohave. Does good things for fuel consumption.
It would seem likely that the sense of the
vorticity in a tornado is related to the shear
and Coriolis Effect ( Gaspard-G, 1835), although
which way, I know not. I was manager of a big DOE
program called the Coriolis Project for three years, so
dealt a little with that. Lotta spin on the ball,
there, literally! For smaller scale vortical flow
Coriolis does not apply. Some interesting anecdotes:
In East Africa, delightful Kikuyu tricksters, stand
right on the equatorial line and for a few shillings
will show you the exit vortex from plastic bucket, then
move it north over the line a few feet into t'other
hemisphere and "prove" that it rotates in the opposite
direction. We seen this! Well, it really does, but not
because of Gaspard-Gustave. In the Libyan deserts Holy
Men will "attack" a dust devil, with much imprecation
and flailing of a broad sword - and "kill"
it. It just drops to the ground! You can see this.
With your own eyes. Allah is indeed great! According
to Bagnold, a great Brit desertologist and fluid
mechanicer, whom I have used for some of his results,
the secret is to determine in advance what the sense of
the vortex is, and then to enter it on the upwind side,
at just the right distance from the core, and flail
around . It works, too. Ralph Bagnold, soldier,
explorer and scientist, whose monumental work I'm lucky
to have and reference, was portrayed in The English
Patient. Pity when one is better known for a movie than
an important book!
The subject of how wings work is a much vexed
topic. I was interested in what Nick said, but for my
part, I don't think it is like that , and I reckon the
air doesn't think so either. Authors, profs, and pilots
(and I have been all three) are usually wrong on this
topic. I respect only real airfoil designers on this
issue, and have a few honest-ta-God airfoils named after
me, that can be seen on the internet and in books. They
all worked much better than we expected. In fact they
have carried, safely, many men and women to record
heights. There's an article in the Smithsonian about the
first airfoil I designed, in 1955, that me delightfool,
but authoritarian, Teutonic boss-fuhrer, Herr Doktor
Oberst Gustave Von ---, refused to name after me. Well,
it flew nobly for the RAF, carried nuclear payloads in
the good old, bad old days and kept the Ruzskies at
bay. Mebbe!.
I have given up noting the incorrect theories on
lift. Life too short for that, although if
one restricts one's discussion to things one
knows conversation gets pretty limited. I am content to
simply observe what the air does, and weakly agree with
it, much as my intellect may reject that pusillanimous
attitude. As an expert witness, I have frequently
quoted: "Theory crumbles before the Facts". Juries like
it. But some years ago, while on the USC aero
faculty, I decided to quit pointing out mistakes and
publish my idea of the Truth. The paper (1996) is The
Meaning of Lift, published as AIAA 34
th Aerospace Sciences Meeting, paper 96-1191. Funny
thing is that, as a joke, I started calling it The
Meaning of Life, and that has made it difficult to
find by computer, but not by real people! Well, wot
the Hell, for me and most of my fellow spirits up in the
Big Blue, Lift IS Life!
Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures
Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to
look for.
1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico
87505,USA
tel:(505)983-7728
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
