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Explorations in aerospace engineering, AI/ML, computational fluid dynamics, and the future of technology.

The Design Iceberg
Latest · June 12, 2026

External Aerodynamics Is the Easy Part: Avoiding the Simulation-on-Simulation Trap

Modern design pipelines optimize external shapes and structures — often with simulations trained on simulations — while the systems integration, certification, manufacturability, and envelope-corner knowledge that turns a design into a program sits below the waterline, carried in the open literature and in the engineers and organizations that earned it.

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Where LLM-driven experimental testing needs human oversight

Where the LLM Needs a Human: The Limits of AI-Driven Experimental Testing

A candid post-mortem of an LLM-run smoke-tunnel validation — the confidently-wrong drag number, the 0 m/s artifact, the failed vision detection — and why setup, execution, and interpretation still demand careful human hands.

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LLM-Orchestrated CFD Bear Aerodynamics

LLM-Orchestrated CFD: How Claude Opus Can Run a Complete Aerodynamics Study

A fluids engineer directing an LLM through natural-language conversation produced a complete OpenFOAM simulation, parametric shape optimization, and automated ParaView visualization — on a bear geometry.

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AI-Assisted Capture of Missing Physics

AI-Assisted Capture of Missing Physics: PINNs Trained on Wind Tunnel Data

Physics-informed neural networks trained on 1959 wind tunnel data capture missing physics that traditional CFD simulations miss entirely — on a single-board computer.

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SkyView Pro Earth Intelligence

Building the Earth Intelligence Tool with Vibe Coding

How AI-powered development enabled the creation of SkyView Pro, a comprehensive real-time geospatial platform using only open-source data.

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Wind Tunnel Testing

Home-based Wind Tunnel Testing: The Art & Science of Beautiful Flow Physics

Smoke flow visualization, optical flow velocity vectors, and SINDy analysis on a 1:64 scale car model — all from a small wind tunnel at home.

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Engineering Tools

Flaw in Stating "Teams Are Using Outdated Tools"

Why specialized tools developed by engineering firms over decades often outperform modern flashy alternatives that deviate from real-world physics.

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Turbulence Realm-Tracker

Introducing Turbulence Realm-Tracker

A tool for precise analysis of movement in video using Dlib — for loading videos, calibrating measurements, selecting regions of interest, and deriving velocity and displacement data.

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Turbulence Realm SINDy

Introducing Turbulence Realm — SINDy

Integrating advanced computer vision (Optical Flow) with data-driven modeling (SINDy) to understand and predict fluid dynamics from video data.

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RPi CM5 Home Automation

The Humble RPi CM5 That Powers Sensing, Automation, Analytics & Media at Home

How a tiny energy-efficient powerhouse became the brain of a home automation system with Home Assistant, AI vision, and media serving.

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