--- title: Aerodynamics description: Aerodynamics is the study of how gases interact with moving bodies, particularly aircraft. You will understand the principles of lift, drag, thrust, and gravity, and how to analyze airflow to design efficient flight vehicles. category: engineering subcategory: aerospace-engineering difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/aerodynamics --- # Aerodynamics Aerodynamics is the study of how gases interact with moving bodies, particularly aircraft. You will understand the principles of lift, drag, thrust, and gravity, and how to analyze airflow to design efficient flight vehicles. ## Available Resources 3 Books • 1 Courses • 4 Websites ## Websites ### 1. UIUC Airfoil Coordinates Database Michael Selig's University of Illinois archive of coordinate files for well over a thousand airfoil sections, downloadable as plain text. Use it to feed real geometry into XFOIL, CFD meshes, or wind-tunnel model design. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://m-selig.ae.illinois.edu/ads/coord_database.html **Tags:** airfoils, airfoil-coordinates, wing-design, xfoil, reference-data ### 2. NASA Glenn Research Center - Beginner's Guide to Aerodynamics NASA Glenn's hypertext guide to flight physics, with short pages on lift, drag, airfoil geometry and the governing equations, each paired with an interactive simulator. Builds intuition before you meet the formal derivations. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/ **Tags:** lift, drag, flight-physics, nasa, interactive-simulations ### 3. aiaa.org American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is a professional society for aerospace engineers and students. The site provides industry news, research publications (journals and conference proceedings), standards, education resources, events, and career tools for learning and advancing in aerospace engineering. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://aiaa.org **Tags:** websites, engineering-manufacturing, aerospace-engineering ### 4. nasa.gov NASA.gov is the official site of the U.S. space agency, offering mission news, research results, data, and STEM education resources. It features engineering articles, technical briefs, simulations, multimedia, and classroom materials for students and educators. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://nasa.gov **Tags:** websites, engineering-manufacturing, aerospace-engineering ## Books ### 1. Fundamentals of Aerodynamics **Author:** John D. Anderson Jr. Anderson's standard undergraduate text, building from the governing conservation equations through incompressible airfoil and finite-wing theory to compressible and supersonic flow. Expect to work problems by hand and read the historical asides. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0070016569?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, engineering-manufacturing, aerospace-engineering ### 2. Aerodynamics for Engineers **Author:** John J. Bertin, Russell M. Cummings Undergraduate aerospace text pairing classical theory with experimental data and computational practice, covering incompressible flow, boundary layers, and supersonic and hypersonic regimes. Emphasises applying methods to real aircraft configurations rather than derivation alone. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0130182346?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, engineering-manufacturing, aerospace-engineering ### 3. Theory of Wing Sections **Author:** Ira H. Abbott, Albert E. von Doenhoff The classic NACA-derived reference on airfoil design, combining thin-airfoil and conformal-mapping theory with tabulated coordinates and wind-tunnel data for the four-digit, five-digit and 6-series sections. Still the standard lookup source. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486605868?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, engineering-manufacturing, aerospace-engineering ## Courses ### 1. Introduction to Aerodynamics (MITx 16.101x) **Author:** David Darmofal, Mark Drela, Alejandra Uranga Video lectures and graded exercises on control-volume conservation of mass and momentum, aerodynamic force coefficients, and isentropic and quasi-one-dimensional compressible flow. Learners finish able to estimate lift, drag and cruise performance for subsonic, transonic and supersonic aircraft. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.edx.org/learn/engineering/massachusetts-institute-of-technology-introduction-to-aerodynamics **Tags:** aerodynamics, compressible-flow, fluid-mechanics, aircraft-performance, conservation-laws --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/aerodynamics