The Secret of Flight: Understanding Why it is Possible to Fly

From the smallest gnat to the largest aircraft, all things that fly obey the same aerodynamic principles. This book explains the principles of aeronautics in terms, descriptions, and illustrations that make sense - without complicated mathematics.

It presents a mathematical theory of subsonic flight based on a combination of analysis and computation. By computing and analyzing turbulent solutions of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for slightly viscous flow subject to force boundary conditions, it uncovers a mechanism for the generation of substantial lift at the expense of small drag of a wing, which is fundamentally different from that envisioned in the classical theories by Kutta-Zhukovsky for lift and by Prandtl for drag.