Constructal Law Used to Analyze The Evolution Of Airplanes b4in.org/h64X Analysis in the Journal of Applied Physics uses ‘constructal law’ to witness the evolution of airplane designs over time and predict the future of aerospace design One of the traditional arguments against Darwinian evolution has been that no one can confirm the process exists because it occurs on a time scale immensely greater than a human lifetime. Adrian Bejan, the J. A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University, has disagreed with that notion ever since 1996 when he discovered the Constructal Law, a fundamental principle of physics that underlies the evolution of flow systems as they change in design over time. In a new paper in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing, Bejan and colleagues apply this now-famous law to airplanes, showing, as he said, “that we can witness evolution in our lifetime by documenting the evolution of a flow system that is a little more than a century old: the flying ‘human-and-machine species’. For nearly two decades, Bejan has used the Constructal Law to show how each and every “tree-like” flow pattern, whether natural and manmade — e.g., rivers and basins, neural networks, lightning bolts, electrical circuitry, and of course, trees themselves — could all be linked in terms of how they change in design over time to maximize function. “Simply put,” Bejan said, “the Constructal Law states that for any finite-size flow system to persist, that is, be alive, it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier and easier access to its currents.” In the Journal of Applied Physics paper, Bejan and colleagues examined aircraft designs dating to the beginning of manned flight. They noted that, like the flyers in nature (e.g, birds, bats, insects) throughout “Big History” (history from the Big Bang to the present), the evolutionary trend has been toward larger and larger size. “We showed that larger airplanes are faster, more efficient as vehicles, and have greater range,” Bejan said. “Engine mass is proportional to body mass, a design feature that is the same in animals where the mass of the motive organs — muscle, heart and lungs — is proportional to body mass.” More b4in.org/h64X
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 18:49:20 +0000
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