Abstract
Graphical design concepts are useful for approximating airflow characteristics of local exhaust inlets. They may be applied for situations which are significantly different from those which have been studied experimentally. Simple inlet configurations may be combined as “building blocks” to represent more complex configurations, including obstructive surfaces near an inlet opening. Streamlines and velocity potentials are two-dimensional airflow characteristics which may be applied for design purposes in different ways. These methods include freehand sketching, vector addition, imaginary inlets, conformal mapping, and area/velocity change. Graphical methods are enhanced by application of empirical design equations for certerline velocity gradients. Modern computers can facilitate inlet design by performing complex calculations and graphical representations with relative ease.