George H. Bryan
George Hartley Bryan, generally referred to in technical literature as G. H. Bryan, was a professor as University College, Bangor, Wales who is generally credited with developing, in 1911, the modern mathematical theory of the motion of an airplane in flight, as a rigid body with six degrees of freedom. Except for minor differences in notation form, Bryan's 1911 equations are the same as those used today to evaluate modern advanced aircraft. Surprisingly, his equations - published just eight years after the first aircraft flew - are most accurate when applied to supersonic jets. In evaluating the aircraft mathematically, Bryan focused on issues of aerodynamic stability, rather than on control aspects; stability and control of an aircraft tend to be opposite ends of the same spectrum.
Aviation wasn't Bryan's only contribution to modern science, however. His aeronautical studies were an extension of fluid dynamics engineering that he'd been studying for years. In 1888, he developed the mathematical models for pressures of a fluid in a pipe, as well as external buckling pressures. This math is still used today.
Bibliography
- "The Waves on a Rotating Liquid Spheroid of Finite Ellipticity", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. A, Vol. 180, (1889) Online version.
- Stability in Aviation (1911).
References
- Abzug, Malcolm J. and Larrabee, E. Eugene, Airplane Stability and Control, Second Edition: A History of Technologies that Made Aviation Possible, Cambridge University Press, 2002. Online version.
- Hunsaker, Jerome C. Dynamic Stability of Aeroplanes, US Navy and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1916 Online version (This text validates experimentally Bryan's mathematical theories).
- Guice, Leslie K., and Li, J. Y., Buckling Models and Influencing Factors for Pipe Rehabilitation Design Online version.