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Memorial Tributes Volume 17 (2013) / Chapter Skim
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A.M.O. SMITH
Pages 300-307

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From page 301...
... O S M I T H 1911–1997 Elected in 1989 "For practical contributions to aerodynamics and rocketry and especially for many pioneering advances in computational aerodynamics." BY ROBERT LIEBECK APOLLO MILTON OLIN SMITH, chief aerodynamics engineer–research at the Douglas Aircraft Company and creator of the fundamental techniques for the calculation of aerodynamic flows, died on May 1, 1997, at the age of 85.
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From page 302...
... AMO then entered graduate school and obtained a job helping Frank Malina prepare illustrations for a book being written by Theodore von Kármán and Maurice Biot. Because many of the figures were graphs of mathematical functions, AMO had to learn and understand the functions themselves.
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From page 303...
... Said improvement was made from his mother's pepper box using tin snips and a soldering iron. This initial firing of a rocket motor in the Arroyo Seco resulted in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
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From page 304...
... Goddard Memorial Award of the American Rocket Society in 1954. AMO returned to Douglas in 1944 and resumed his work involving aerodynamics and preliminary design.
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From page 305...
... The main accomplishments were development of practical methods of analyzing laminar and turbulent boundary layer flow, the hydrogen bubble technique of flow visualization, potential flow analyses, analysis of stability and transition of boundary layers, and introduction of the en method of predicting transition. AMO pioneered the application of computers to many of these problems.
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From page 306...
... A very significant contribution to boundary layer theory is AMO's en method for predicting transition of a laminar boundary layer to a turbulent one. What may be one of AMO's most significant contributions is his development of the panel method for the exact calculation of the potential flow about a body of arbitrary geometry.
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From page 307...
... It was typical for him to come up to one of his engineers in the Aero Research Group and say, "Hey, I've been thinking about -- ." And thus a new aerodynamic concept would be born. An array of these concepts ultimately culminated in his classic 37th Wright Brothers Lecture, "HighLift Aerodynamics," which has become a required "text" for many aerodynamics courses.
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Key Terms

  • douglas aircraft
  • aircraft company
  • aerodynamic design
  • arbitrary geometry
  • turbulent boundary

  • douglas neumann
  • potential flow
  • paint job
  • milton olin
  • speed record

  • neumann method
  • chief engineer
  • laminar boundary
  • rocket motor
  • predicting transition

  • wright brothers
  • research airplane
  • brothers lecture
  • world speed
  • woodrow wilson

  • wind tunnel
  • period held
  • olin smith
  • apollo milton
  • layer flow

  • dark blue
  • flight testing
  • testing airplanes
  • theodore von
  • jet propulsion


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