Introduction To Aerospace Engineering
Posted 23 Feb 2013.
As I mentioned the other day, I’ve been watching (and sometimes just listening to) a course taught at TU Delft in 2011 called Introduction to Aerospace Engineering I. So far it has been a solid introduction to at the very least the things I didn’t know I didn’t know. Early on several things have been a review due to my initial research, but I’m learning a lot with each lecture as well.
I thought I’d provide a brief synopsis of each lecture and what I got out of it.
This first lecture included some administrivia about the course as well as a brief overview of the history of lighter-than-air ballooning, the first 100 years or so of flight. After this historical overview, a lot of foundational material is presented about the two main gas laws that will be used throughout the course and how to use them to solve basic problems.
The basics of what makes up our atmosphere and the various layers is discussed. This lecture also worked through some practical problem solving of finding the temperature at a specific altitude. This involved working through several layers of the International Standard Atmosphere, starting with the ideal atmosphere at sea level. It’s the kind of thing I would likely look up or calculate with the assistance of a computer or calculator, but if I were to be a “real” aerospace engineer I would be able to complete this work by hand using only a table of basic information about the ISA and my armament of equations and their transformations to all possible useful forms.
This one was great. It included a lot of early aviation history from an engineering point of view and included highlights from American and European innovators. This also included more review for me than the previous two lectures, mostly due to my flight training, studying, and previous exploration of airfoil design. If you’re only going to watch one lecture, this might be the one. It’s a little lighter on equations and heavy on fun.