Reinventing the Screw

Much of my career has been spent figuring out which “screw” will work to hold parts and pieces together in an airplance. Airplanes don’t use screws but hi-locks and other “riveting fasteners”. My personal life has also featured many long hours spent in hardware stores looking for the right screw, nail, and fastener to hold more parts and pieces together. So imagine my thrill at the announcement of a reinvented screw.

For centuries now the screw has held things together, and for almost as long it has been frustratingly inept at its central purpose. Concrete cracks when it is punctured by a screw. Plastic creeps away from the pressure, sliding down the threads so that even a tightened screw loosens almost instantly. Carmakers have to mold brass inserts into plastic parts to accept screws; otherwise they might loosen and cause a dreaded rattle.

Kenneth LeVey has a better idea…he has reinvented what the company dubs the threaded fastener in a way that lets it grip tight where it used to let loose–and compete with cheaper screws made by offshore rivals…

…He was flabbergasted by how archaic screw design was. On rare occasions when a new screw length or width was needed, an engineer would consult a 300-page manual dating from 1936 that explains the relationships between certain heights and pitches of threads and the lengths and widths of the resulting screws. “They would go do math for a couple of days and come back with an answer,”LeVey says–to how the grooved dies should look, how much pressure should be applied to the blank, and what the diameter of the blank should be….

…Last year ITW introduced a plastic fastener that it calls the BosScrew. Its threads have tiny notches on their upper surfaces that grab the plastic before it can slide down the helix. Carmakers no longer have to mold a dozen or so brass inserts into their plastic intake manifolds to accept screws, at six cents per fastener. A BosScrew costing a penny will go directly into the plastic–and save money by cutting out the inserts.
The Taming of the Screw by Forbes Magazine

 

Beam Me Up, Scotty - Coming to a Teleporter Near You Soon?

Military examines “beaming up” data and people reports SFGate in an article about how close engineers are to developing teleportation.

Not for want of trying, though. Last year, the Air Force spent $25,000 on a report, titled “Teleportation Physics Study,” to examine possible ways to teleport humans and objects through space…In recent years, many physicists have become excited about a phenomenon called “quantum teleportation,” which works only with infinitesimally tiny particles. It might lead to new ways of transmitting cryptographically secure messages, some speculate, but not human beings for a long time to come, if ever.

“Experts in the field can foresee using teleportation in the area of data encryption but not (at least not in the near future) for the purpose of ‘beaming’ macroscopic (e.g., human-size) objects across” space, said Phil Schewe, a physicist, chief science writer at the American Institute of Physics and author of a forthcoming book, “Bottled Lightning,” on the history of the American electrical grid…On one hand, he concluded that “Star Trek”-style teleportation faces enormous obstacles, partly because it would require the development of extraordinarily high-speed computers and would consume mind-boggling amounts of energy. Also, it would encounter all kinds of physics headaches generated by the principles of quantum physics. For example, the computing-encoding of the entire contents of a human body would require 10 to the 28th (the number one followed by 28 zeroes) kilobytes of computer storage capacity. It would take 100 quintillion of the world’s best commercially available hard drives “to store the encoded information of just one human being.”…Also, “it will take more than 2,400 times the present age of the universe (about 13 billion years) to access this amount of data” from the computers, Davis writes. And “to heat up and dematerialize one human being would require . .. the energy equivalent of 330 one-megaton thermonuclear bombs.”

It seems that the Chinese are working on this technology, too. While it might be deemed wasteful and fantasy, in the next decade or so there could be a teleportation race as the demand to move goods and services faster across the planet heats up. Who knows - but the idea is exciting.

In addition to the article, there is a copy of the full Teleportation Physics Study via Evan Poll’s blog or from the Federation of American Scientists site for a PDF file.

 

Mars Rover Continues to Amaze Engineers and Fans

There is little doubt that the airline and aircraft industry have benefited tremendously from their brother, the space industry. I, among many engineers, are thrilled that the Mars rover, Spirit, continues to dazzle us with results and images from the Mars surface. Areo-News Net report, “NASA’s Durable Spirit Sends Intriguing New Images From Mars”, says:

Working atop a range of Martian hills, NASA’s Spirit rover is rewarding researchers with tempting scenes filled with evidence of past planet environments.

“When the images came down and we could see horizon all the way around, that was every bit as exhilarating as getting to the top of any mountain I’ve climbed on Earth,” said Chris Leger, a rover planner at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.

The images are amazing. While Hurricane Katrina smashed into the Southern Gulf Coast of the United States, NASA released animated images of another storm of dust devils spinning around on the Mars surface.

You can keep up with the lastest news from the Mars Rovers from the NASA website.

For more information on this website, see My Technorati Profile.

 

Aviation Terminology and Glossary

Speed New’s Aviation Glossary provides terminology, definitions, and a glossary of the words you may need to know about aviation. If you work in the industry, you might already know these words, but once in a while something might come up and you don’t want to let your co-workers know that you don’t know. You can look it up there. We won’t tell.

 

Improved Weather Prediction is Possible

According to a new report from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), new research will improve the accuracy of medium-range weather forecasts in the Northern Hemisphere. This should seriously impact air travel as better forecasting means better air traffic control and navigation around storms.

 

NASA and NOAA scientists at the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA) in Camp Springs, MD, came up with procedures to improve forecasting accuracy. The scientists worked with experimental data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

They found incorporating AIRS data into numerical weather prediction models improves the accuracy range of experimental six-day Northern Hemisphere weather forecasts by up to six hours, a four percent increase. AIRS is a high-spectral resolution infrared instrument that takes 3-D pictures of atmospheric temperatures, water vapor and trace gases.

The instrument data have officially been incorporated into NOAA’s National Weather Service’s operational weather forecasts.

“NASA is assisting the world’s weather prediction agencies by providing very detailed, accurate observations of key atmospheric variables that interact to shape our weather and climate,” said Dr. Mary Cleave, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “The forecast improvement accomplishment alone makes the AIRS project well worth the American taxpayers’ investment.”

 

According to the article, the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts began using data from AIRS in October 2003 and reported “an improvement in forecast accuracy of eight hours in Southern Hemisphere five-day forecasts.”

 

Talk About Your Out Of This World Airplanes

Most of us engineers and air craft mechanics work overtime to keep planes that fly within the atmosphere of the planet safe and sturdy. Imagine building an airplane that will fly around Mars?

The Marsplane is being designed by Aurora to fly in the Martian atmosphere. While the design challenges are similar to other high-altitude aircraft, this airplanes literally needs to carry its own weight. The glider will be sent to Mars by rocket, folded up in a pod that will be dropped from the space capsule, unfold itself and fly around taking photographs of the Mars surface from within the Martian atmosphere.

The requirements imposed by an aeroshell less than three feet in diameter led to an innovative configuration and folding scheme for the aircraft’s wings and tail configuration. MarsFlyer™ was powered by a reliable and compact rocket propulsion system. In 1999, a rocket-powered prototype flew at low altitude, demonstrating the validity of the rocket concept. Later, many of MarsFlyer’s™ key features were integrated into Aurora’s latest Martian airplane design, which was the basis of NASA Langley’s Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey (ARES) proposal.

The ARES airplane is powered by a bi-propellant liquid fuel rocket. In addition to the science instruments payload of a magnetometer, mass spectrometer, point spectrometer, and high resolution camera, ARES will carry a tail-mounted video camera and the flight sensors required for control and navigation.

It is technological advances like this that will eventually filter through to the entire space program, as well as the terrestrial aircraft industry.

 

NTSB Celebrates 30 Years

The National Transportation and Standards Board (NTSB) was part of the Department of Transportation. In 1975, it was branched off to act as an independent safety investigation organization. Its job is to “improve safety in all modes of transportation” including aircraft.

Here are some of the NTSB’s achievements over the past 30 years:

• Required anti-collision systems, called Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems (TCAS), as standard equipment on passenger flying aircraft.
• In addition to in-air collision avoidance system, pushed for airport operators to install airport ground collission avoidance devices.
• Set up designated radio frequencies to allow for direct communications between airport fire and rescue crews and flight crews in the event of an emergency.
• For emergency purposes only, established standardized hand signals for when radio communications fail.
• Developed stronger fire safety standards for baggage and cargo compartments in large passenger aircraft.
• Pushed for increase use of “runway arrestor beds”, cellular concrete constructions that force an airplane to rapidly decelerate, avoiding runs off the ends of runways.
• The NTSB has continued to urge the FAA to “reduce dangers to aircraft flying in icing conditions, to eliminate flammable fuel and air vapors in fuel tanks, to stop runway incursions and ground collisions of aircraft, to improve audio and data recorders so that they retain at least two hours of audio, and to install video recorders in cockpits so as to give investigators more information to identify the often complex causes of aviation accidents.”

Air Cargo News: NTSB 30 Years - Lessons Learned

 

Boeing 888 Ready for Launch

We just wanted to show you the first picture of the premier Boeing 888 just before the first test flight.

Okay, this came to us via email and I just couldn’t resist. It’s a great digital image of what “could happen”. Just think of the engineering possibilities - and nightmares. In this industry, anything is possible. Enjoy!

 

Cut-away View of the Airbus 380

Want a look inside the Airbus 380? This cut-away view on a pdf page of the Airbus 380 is a great way to see the innards of this vast airplane.

 

Test Flight Journal of Boeing 777-200LR

Boeing’s “The Flight Test Journal” is one of the few blogs that take you deep into the project of developing and testing new commercial aircraft. The team is currently working on the Boeing 777-200LR, the Long Range version of the 777. The photographs and information helps you understand how the whole flight test process works.

It’s a unique blog as it is not the words and perspective of just one person. Each person on the flight test team participates, adding stories about themselves and their work. It’s a rare chance to meet the people who help build the planes that you fly.