Loewy Distinguished Lecture

"The Returning Wake: From Loewy’s Theory to Modern Helicopter Aeromechanics"

featuring

Gordon Leishman

Thursday, November 5

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Guggenheim 442

About the Seminar

In 1957, Robert G. Loewy’s theory of rotary-wing unsteady aerodynamics introduced an elegant representation of the returning helicopter wake and its influence on blade loading. This inaugural Loewy Lecture will revisit the physical ideas underlying that theory, explain how it extends classical unsteady airfoil theory to the rotor problem, and trace the evolution of rotor-wake modeling from analytical methods to modern computational approaches. The lecture will also present a new indicial-response interpretation of the returning-wake problem based on Loewy’s assumptions, showing how the lift response evolves as shed wake vorticity returns and interacts with the blade during successive passages. These ideas will then be connected to contemporary problems in rotorcraft aeromechanics.

About the Speaker

J. Gordon Leishman is an aerospace engineer, educator, and author whose work has focused on helicopter and rotorcraft aerodynamics, unsteady aerodynamics, rotor wakes, aeroacoustics, and rotary-wing aeromechanics. He served as the Minta Martin Professor of Engineering at the University of Maryland and later as a Distinguished Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. His research and teaching have included rotor-wake physics, blade-vortex interaction, wind-tunnel experimentation, and advanced rotorcraft concepts. He is the author of Principles of Helicopter Aerodynamics and the open educational resource textbook Introduction to Aerospace Flight Vehicles, and has published extensively in the rotorcraft and aerospace literature.