VOGELPOHL

GERMANY (see also List of Individuals)

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15.7.1900 Osnabrück/D - 9.3.1975 Göttingen/D

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Georg Vogelpohl initiated studies at the Technical University of Hannover in 1920. He graduated in 1929 as a mathematician from Technical University of Berlin TUB. The following years were spent as an assistant to Hermann Föttinger (1877-1945) to investigate the resistance forces of locomotives in a wind tunnel. His research led to aerodynamic designs for vehicles of speed beyond 200 km/h. Vogelpohl submitted his PhD thesis to TUB in 1936. From 1942 he headed the newly established department on resistance research at the Berlin Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut KWI, and collaborated with Ludwig Prandtl (1875-1953). Vogelpohl was a Lecturer at the Hannover Technical University from 1943. After the war, he moved to Göttingen University to continue resistance research by including aspects of fluid mechanics, thermodynamics and solid body physics. He also lectured at Braunschweig Technical University from 1952, and was promoted there to associate professor in 1958. From 1968 to retirement in 1970 he was an honorary professor at Clausthal University. He was a Member of the Braunschweig Scientific Association from 1963.

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Vogelpohl devoted his research to the resistance problem. Applications included not only locomotives and cars but mainly bearings. He took interest in the approach of Osborne Reynolds (1842-1912) who investigated fluid flow in thin layers in which the fluid viscosity plays a significant effect. He observed that this phenomenon may be stated mathematically as a variational problem such that he presented solutions of the Reynolds equation with methods of variational calculus. Later his research group investigated resistance both from the theoretical and from the practical points of view.

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_{Fricke, J., Noack, G. (1975). Georg Vogelpohl. Jahrbuch DGLR (20): 18-21.}

_{Kochanowsky, W. (1965). Georg Vogelpohl 65 Jahre. Zeitschrift für Flugwissenschaften 13(7):}

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_{Vogelpohl, G. (1934). Windkanalversuche über den Luftwiderstand von Eisenbahn-Fahrzeugen. Zeitschrift VDI 78(5): 159-167.}

_{Vogelpohl, G. (1940). Die rechnerische Behandlung des Schmierproblems beim Lager. Öl und Kohle 36(1): 9-13; 36(3): 34-38.}

_{Vogelpohl, G. (1944). Die Strömung aus einer Wirbelquelle zwischen ebenen Wänden mit Berücksichtigung der Wandreibung. ZAMM 24(5/6): 289-293.}

_{Vogelpohl, G. (1949). 250 Jahre Reibungsforschung. Zeitschrift VDI 91(24): 641-643. Vogelpohl, G. (1958). Betriebssichere Gleitlager. Springer: Berlin.}