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The design and construction of the Eiffel Tower was based, in part, on a uniform horizontal wind model giving 300 kg m-2 kinematic pressure acting on the surface of the tower. Eiffel received a patent for his method of construction that eliminates the need for diagonal trellis bars used to resist the moment of an oncoming wind. At the end of the 19th century boundary-layer theory, laminar or turbulent, was nonexistent. Now, however, models for atmospheric flow over rough landscapes are available, the simplest being a power-law distribution of velocity with height. In this paper we deduce the shape of the tower had Eiffel incorporated this information into the design and construction of his world famous tower. Moreover, we prove Eiffel’s observation that the tower profile conforms to the moment distribution wrought by the wind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural convection in a vertical slot filled with a fluid-saturated porous medium modeled by the Brinkman equation is considered. A continuum of solutions are found from capped to open ends in fully-developed two-dimensional flow. This brings to flow in a porous media some aspects of the Newtonian conduction regime results of Bühler (Heat Mass Transf 39: 631, 2003) and the convection regime results of Weidman (Heat Mass Transf 43: 103, 2006). The Brinkman model, valid for sufficiently large porosity and governed by parameter α, allows one to connect Bühler’s conduction regime flow at low α to a near-Darcy convection regime boundary-layer flow at high α. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]