Some people thought that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) might call time on the wind tunnel. Tunnels date back as far as the Wright Brothers who used their tests to refine the aeroplane that first flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Written in 1821, the Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flow that form the core of CFD code pre-date even that inaugural flight but couldn't be widely applied until the 1970s and the advent of computers to derive the solutions. Wind tunnel testing continues to be a valuable commodity within the aerospace and automotive industries, especially in areas of analysis where fluid flow is hard to model or the behaviour not yet fully understood. Indeed, the two technologies complement each other well and improvements to one are used to refine the other.
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