The design, analysis and manufacture of complex system, such as ships, automobiles, and aircraft, involves processing on a variety of computers using different programming languages running on different operating systems as well as massive data exchange between different computational processes. The Internet and the emerging distributed computing paradigm provides a unique opportunity for Simul...

Abstract Brackets are an essential component in aircraft manufacture and design, joining parts together, supporting weight, holding wires, strengthening joints. Hundreds or thousands of unique brackets used every aircraft, but manufacturing a large number distinct is inefficient expensive. Fortunately, many so-called “different” fact very similar even identical to each other. In this manuscript...

NASA Langley Research Center has developed a low-cost piezocomposite actuator which has application for controlling vibrations in large inflatable smart space structures, space telescopes, and high performance aircraft. Tests show the NASA piezocomposite device is capable of producing large, directional, in-plane strains on the order of 2000 parts-per-million peak-to-peak, with no reduction in ...

Up to five percent of aircraft departure delays are caused by late passengers or late bags at a gate, and the impact of this in missed slots and subsequent cost will increase as the number of flights increases. This paper describes the development of a combined real time panoramic imaging system, capable of photogrammetric measurement, with a new long range radio frequency tagging system that i...

Casting is an economical way to manufacture parts. On average, complex aerospace castings incur about one-fourth the cost of forgings. However, castings can not be used as primary structure in aircraft because of poor control over design allowables for the material strength and ductility. They can be used as secondary structure, but must include significant safety factors usually between 3 and ...

Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) has gradually gained prominence as a major tool to speed up product development, especially in large scale projects such the ones that take place in aerospace and automotive industry. The encoding of design knowledge from domain experts into computer codes that can generate complex geometric data has demonstrated significant savings in manpower and time resourc...

Any use of energy in industrial productive activities is combined with various environment impacts. Withintransportation, this fact was not only found among land transport, railways and maritime transport, but also in the air transport industry. An effective climate protection requires strategies and measures for reducing all greenhouses gas emissions, in particular carbon dioxide, and must tak...

The evolving complexity of many modern artifacts, such as aircraft, has led to a serious fragmentation of knowledge among software systems required for their design and manufacture. In the case of aircraft design, views of the same generic design knowledge are redundantly encoded in multiple software systems, each system using its own idiosyncractic ontology, and each system containing that kno...

In this article, we report the design of a reflective intensity-modulated optical fiber sensor for blade tip-clearance measurement, and the experimental results for the first stage of a compressor of an aircraft engine operating in real conditions. The tests were performed in a ground test cell, where the engine completed four cycles from idling state to takeoff and back to idling state. During...