Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall standA mighty woman with a torch, whose flameIs the imprisoned lightning, and her nameMother of Exiles. From her beacon-handGlows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes commandThe air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.Keep, ancient lands, your …
Author Archives: saemiller
Vincent van Gogh and Lewis Carroll
A combination of Carroll’s famous poem at the Tea Party flying high in van Gogh’s Starry Night. Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, How I wonder where you’re at, Over rooftops, fields, and spires, Beneath the sky that never tires. Casting shadows, broad and deep, Over quiet towns asleep, Like a comet, you draw near, In the …
AIAA Paper: Fully-Parabolized Prediction of Hypersonic Sonic Boom
Abstract: Hypersonic flight-vehicles create shock and expansion waves that propagate through the atmosphere and are observed on the ground as sonic booms. We present a methodology to predict the near-field aerodynamic pressure and sonic boom signature using approximately 1% of the computational cost relative to fully-nonlinear computational fluid dynamics and state-ofthe-art sonic boom propagation solvers. …
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Congratulations to my Students at the MAE Awards 2023
Reflection on Twenty Years Since the Loss of Columbia
Graduate Student Garrison S. Osborne and Steven A. E. MillerUniversity of Florida Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Well before the loss of Columbia, the NASA Office of Technology Assessment wrote, “Shuttle reliability is uncertain, but has been estimated to range between 97 and 99 percent. If the Shuttle reliability is 98 percent, there would …
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On Seminar with Professor Said Elghobashi
It is more rare to be inspired as time goes on. On occasion, it is a great priveledge to hear a seminar by a world expert in turbulence. In this case at University of Florida, we had Professor Said Elghobashi from University of California Irvine join us for department seminar. He can be credited with …
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Fontenelle on Science
We like to regard as useless what we do not know; it is a kind of revenge; and since mathematics and physics are rather generally unknown, they rather generally pass for useless. The source of their misfortune is plain; they are prickly, wild, and hard to reach …. Such is the destiny of sciences handled …
Aeroacoustic and Aerodynamic Interaction Effects Between eVTOL Rotors
My student presented his MS thesis on the aerodynamics and aeroacoustics of rotors. Abstract: Electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft are characterized by their unconventional wing and electric rotor configurations, which involve both side-by-side and tandem rotor configurations. These configurations create unique aerodynamic and aeroacoustic flow-fields. We numerically investigate the interaction effects between rotor …
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On Infinity by Euler
We may here deduce from it a few consequences that are extremely curious, and worthy of attention. The fraction $\frac{1}{\infty}$ represents the quotient resulting from the division of the dividend 1 by the divisor $\infty$. Now, we know, that if we divide the dividend 1 by the quotient $\frac{1}{\infty}$, which is equal to nothing, we …
Teller on Uncertainty
… we have a radioactive substance that emits, on the average, a particle, an alpha particle, once every second on the average. Now, here I have a counter, and I close that counter, so it won’t count, except that I open it for half a second. If, in that half a second, a particle arrives, …