Roger I'm so glad that my blurbish explanations are making a little sense, the subject drives me nuts too, and I started doing it thirty six years ago.
I quite like ChristiaanJ's analogy on explaing how an inlet can provide thrust, but the precise shockwave geometry that the Concorde intake required in order to do what it did best, was little more than mind numbing in terms of complexity and control; It is really difficult to imagine if it could ever be bettered aerodynamically, even now.
It is getting clearer all the time, many thanks to you both, but I have to take the math as read.
I have my grandfather's grasp of the mechanical (electronics was before his time, but those too
),but not my late father's self taught grasp of mathematical concepts. They just give me a sensation very closely allied to vertigo.
Your latest diagram at #39 has, I think, finally wrapped it up about as far as I am going to be able to cope with.
In return I could try and explain how MRI scanners work
, but it would be a long way off piste and is just as much brain damage.
What I find so neat - I'm sure it is beautiful if the maths are included - is the way the design team 'conjured' the shock waves.
The edges, dump gates and ramps are
sort of obvious, almost simplistic in a sense, but the secret is all in the way these engineering 'magic wands' conjure a series of invisible, yet powerful 'force fields'. Force fields not directly connected to the doors and ramps necessarily, but the whole witches kitchen interacting to produce .... the thrust rabbit out of the intake hat.
I know engineers are regarded as soul less nerds, but the things they create are truly beautiful. Very few in Britain would disagree that Concorde is a beautiful thing to look at, like the Spitfire and the fan blades on a
Trent 900, but how many could understand how beautiful she is on the
inside?
There I go, waxing lyrical on a technical forum.
I'll get my hat.
ROger.
PS: Thanks again guys, I just can't stop reading these threads.