Loads Acting on Aircraft
The flight envelope of an aeroplane can be divided into two regimes. The first is rectilinear flight in a straight line, i.e. the aircraft does not accelerate normal to the…
Engineering – A Manifesto
“Engineering is not the handmaiden of physics any more than medicine is of biology” What is science? And how is it different from engineering? The two disciplines are closely related…
Risk and failure in complex engineering systems
“We must ensure this never happens again.” This is a common reaction to instances of catastrophic failure. However, in complex engineering systems, this statement is inherently paradoxical. If the right…
On Boundary Layers: Laminar, Turbulent and Skin Friction
In the early 20th century, a group of German scientists led by Ludwig Prandtl at the University of Göttingen began studying the fundamental nature of fluid flow and subsequently laid the foundations for modern…
Antifragility and Aircraft Design
Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the term “Antifragility” in his book of the same name. Antifragility describes objects that gain from random perturbations, i.e. disorder. Taleb writes, Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow…
NASA Langley Research Center
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of working on a research project at NASA’s Langley Research Centre. Apart from interacting with world-renowned scientists and engineers, what impressed me most…
Three essential engineering skills and the state of modern technology
John Partridge is the founder of the deap-sea instrumentation company Sonardyne, and also graduated from the University of Bristol, my alma mater, with a degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1962.…
The History of Rocket Science
Rocket technology has evolved for more than 2000 years. Today’s rockets are a product of a long tradition of ingenuity and experimentation, and combine technical expertise from a wide array…
Dimensional Analysis: From Atomic Bombs to Wind Tunnel Testing
Despite the growing computer power and increasing sophistication of computational models, any design meant operate in the real world requires some form of experimental validation. The idealist modeller, me included,…
The von Kármán Vortex Street and Tacoma Narrows Disaster
On November 8, 1940 newspapers across America opened with the headline “TACOMA NARROWS BRIDGE COLLAPSES”. The headline caught the eye of a prominent engineering professor who, from reading the news…
