Fluid Mechanics Problem Creating a Mesh

jboeck6

We are beginning a project in my Intermediate Fluids class to make a program that can do aerodynamic analysis on an air foil. First, given any three nodal coordinates (x,y) of a triangle, we must write a program to compute its surface vectors and area of the triangle. The nodes will be in clockwise order.

I know I can compute the area through a determinant by doing A=0.5*det([1,1,1;x1,x2,x3;y1,y2,y3]); where 1, 2, and 3 denote each node and x and y are the coordinates.

Please help me start off my code or give insight to calculating the surface vectors.

Also, we will be using MATLAB.

Thanks!

boneh3ad

Well you know the direction from any one point to an adjacent point, right? Treat the line connecting those two as a vector and cross it with a vector coming "out of the page" from the same vertex you started with and you will get a mutually orthogonal vector. Then just normalize it and place it in the center of the line connecting your two points.