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 anyone 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.