I recently stumbled across the patent that is attached to this post.  It's title 'Simulation of String Vibration' obviously caught my attention.  Hoping there was more to it, I downloaded and read it.  To save you the time, I'll summarize.  It basically reads like a conference paper that would probably not get accepted into any respectable journal.  What is patent is a little more specific than the title would imply but nothing that is any more than a trivial extension of existing research.  Essentially the patent describes a way (finite elements) to simulate the planar vibration of a string (actually a tensioned beam) that is excited by a cross-flow.  The concluding