20 Facts About Ludwig Prandtl

Ludwig Prandtl was a German fluid dynamicist, physicist and aerospace scientist.

Ludwig Prandtl was a pioneer in the development of rigorous systematic mathematical analyses which he used for underlying the science of aerodynamics, which have come to form the basis of the applied science of aeronautical engineering.

Ludwig Prandtl's studies identified the boundary layer, thin-airfoils, and lifting-line theories.

Ludwig Prandtl's mother suffered from a lengthy illness and, as a result, Ludwig spent more time with his father, a professor of engineering.

Ludwig Prandtl's father encouraged him to observe nature and think about his observations.

Ludwig Prandtl entered the Technische Hochschule Munich in 1894 and graduated with a Ph.

Ludwig Prandtl's thesis was "On Tilting Phenomena, an Example of Unstable Elastic Equilibrium",.

Ludwig Prandtl recalled that this discovery led to the reasoning behind his boundary-layer approach to resistance in slightly-viscous fluids.

In 1901 Ludwig Prandtl became a professor of fluid mechanics at the technical school in Hannover, later the Technical University Hannover and then the University of Hannover.

The effect of the paper was so great that Ludwig Prandtl would succeed Hans Lorenz as director of the Institute for Technical Physics at the University of Gottingen later in the year.

In 1907, during his time at Gottingen, Ludwig Prandtl was tasked with establishing a new facility for model studies of motorized airships called Motorluftschiffmodell-Versuchsanstalt, later the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt in 1919.

Ludwig Prandtl expanded upon the ideas in his student's dissertations to include a thermal boundary layer associated with heat transfer.

Ludwig Prandtl made specific additions to study cambered airfoils, like those on World War I aircraft, and published a simplified thin-airfoil theory for these designs.

Ludwig Prandtl showed that an elliptical spanwise lift distribution the most efficient, giving the minimum induced drag for the given span.

Ludwig Prandtl later extended his theory to describe a bell-like lift distribution, obtained by washing out the wing tips until negative lift was obtained, which gave the minimum induced drag for any given aircraft weight, suggesting that adverse yaw forces could be countered solely by wing tip aerodynamics, but this new theory was largely ignored.

Ludwig Prandtl had little time to work on the problem further until the 1920s, when he worked with Adolf Busemann and created a method for designing a supersonic nozzle in 1929.

Ludwig Prandtl developed the concept of "circulation" which proved to be particularly important for the hydrodynamics of ship propellers.

Ludwig Prandtl made significant contributions to the field of tribology.

Ludwig Prandtl worked at Gottingen until he died on 15 August 1953.

Ludwig Prandtl is often referred to as the father of modern aerodynamics.