Franz Xaver Wortmann (September 24, 1921 - January 16, 1985) was a German aerodynamicist.

Early life

After World War II, Wortmann spent time as a pilot and observer with the

German Air Force The German Air Force (german: Luftwaffe, lit=air weapon or air arm, ) is the aerial warfare branch of the , the armed forces of Germany. The German Air Force (as part of the ''Bundeswehr'') was founded in 1956 during the era of the Cold War a ...

. He then studied physics in Münster and

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

. After graduating in the field of fluid theory he completed his doctorate as an engineer in 1955. His

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

followed in 1963. Together with Richard Eppler and Dieter Althaus, Wortmann carried out ground-breaking work in the late 1950s and the 1960s in the field of development of

laminar flow In fluid dynamics, laminar flow is characterized by fluid particles following smooth paths in layers, with each layer moving smoothly past the adjacent layers with little or no mixing. At low velocities, the fluid tends to flow without lateral mi ...

airfoil An airfoil (American English) or aerofoil (British English) is the cross-sectional shape of an object whose motion through a gas is capable of generating significant lift, such as a wing, a sail, or the blades of propeller, rotor, or turbine. ...

profiles using the inverse design method. His wing profile designs are known by the FX (for Franz Xaver) in their code. These wing profiles were used in many of the first and second generation of

fibre-reinforced plastic Fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP; also called fibre-reinforced polymer, or in American English ''fiber'') is a composite material made of a polymer matrix reinforced with fibres. The fibres are usually glass (in fibreglass), carbon (in carbon-fib ...

gliders. By the early 1970s, many successful designs of glider had a wing based on a Wortmann profile. In 1974 Wortmann took over the leadership of the Institute of Aerodynamics and Gas Dynamics at the

University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart (german: Universität Stuttgart) is a leading research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany wit ...

. He mainly investigated questions of turbulence.

References

External links

Literature by and about Franz Xaver Wortmann in the German National Library catalogue.
1921 births 1985 deaths Aerodynamicists German aerospace engineers Academic staff of the University of Stuttgart Luftwaffe pilots {{Germany-scientist-stub