What can Software Teams Learn From Aviation?

This pycon talk combines my two passions, aviation and software development. Grab a cold coffee and watch this very interesting talk. Just a little over half an hour, if you have any interest in any of this two stream, you will like the talk.

What can Python-based software teams learn from aviation? Why should software always fail hard? What’s wrong with too many error logs? And why are ops people already like pilots? Learn all this, and about planes, too.

If in hurry, you can download the PDF of the presentation.

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LS-DYNA Examples

Well this one will be a short post.

If you are into analysis and by any chance use LS-Dyna analysis software tool, then I have a site to recommend to you all.

It’s www.dynaexamples.com !!

Yes as the name suggest there are numerous downloadable ls-dyna examples on this website.

Even if you are not into Ls-dyna, but are in analysis, I suggest you take a tour of this website. You will come out by learning something useful.

That’s it, if you know about other sites that might be helpful to other users of this blog, please do name it in comments.

Using Algorithms to Evaluate Designs for Jet Engines and Aircraft

Just a quick update regarding two of my favorite subjects, algorithms and Gas turbines, so check this out.

In this free webinar, Dr. Charles Roche of Pratt & Whitney will outline how algorithms can be used to weigh design decisions. The results have led to design ideas that changed the industry.

Dr Roche will draw on case studies such as how Boeing scrapped thrust reversers in their KC-46 and how Embraer selected their engine for the E-Jet E2.

Register Now

ISRO’s Mangal Yaan Mission In A Nutshell

Curious about first Indian mission to Mars, then this is one video you shouldn’t miss.

The video explains ISRO’s complex mission in a very simple way and make people aware why space exploration is far more important than anything else.

Excellent work by The Curious Engineer

Gas turbine technology

Found this excellent but old material on Rolls-Royce’s website. Ideal for anyone interested in brief text on introduction to jet engine…

Thermal efficiency vs Propulsive efficiency : Who will win?

If you love aviation, then flightglobal is one publication that you can’t miss. Ever since I have been in this industry, I am a regular visitor and reader of flightglobal. I specially gobble up anything related to gas turbine engine.

And have come to love and eagerly wait for the yearly commercial engine report that flightglobal comes up. This years update is great, specially the war between Leap 1A vs PW1100G

Here’s an brief extract.

The blisks, the new materials and the two- stage high-pressure turbine allow CFM to vastly improve the thermal efficiency of the Leap, yielding a double-digit improvement in fuel efficiency with a conventional architecture for a narrowbody aircraft engine.

If the Leap architecture is intended to optimise the thermal efficiency of the engine, P&W’s PW1100G is mostly aimed at improving propulsive efficiency. There are generally two airflows in a turbofan engine – one that travels through the core of the engine and one which bypasses the core. The former is used mainly to drive the engine, although a small amount generates thrust. The latter, or bypass airflow, generates the majority of thrust.

A simple way to make the engine more efficient in generating thrust is to increase the amount of airflow that bypasses the engine core, or the bypass ratio. The only way to increase the bypass flow is to enlarge the diameter of the inlet fan, which is connected by a shaft to its power sources in the low-pressure turbine.

In a conventional engine architecture such as the Leap, the low-pressure turbine and inlet fan rotate at the same speed. As the inlet fan diameter widens, the tips of the blades spin faster than the speed of sound, reducing efficiency, and causing noise and vibration problems.

Instead, P&W introduces a reduction gear on the shaft that decouples the rotation speed of the high-pressure turbine and the inlet fan, allowing the latter to spin at one-third the speed of the former. As a result, the PW1100G has a bypass ratio of 12:1, twice the 6:1 ratio of the V2500. The reduction gear also reduces the load on the low- pressure turbine. The job of spinning the inlet fan and booster stages on the CFM Leap requires seven stages in the low-pressure turbine. The PW1100G inlet fan is 10cm (4in) wider than the Leap-1A, but uses only three stages in the low-pressure turbine.

Not Much of an Engineer

Last year during this time, I found myself at the Rolls-Royce Heritage center with couple of my colleagues to checkout the Rolls-Royce Trent LEGO engine. At the museum, stumbled upon the name of this book, Not Much of an Engineer by Sir Stanley Hooker.

Intrigued by the title, did amazon search for the book and read the first chapter of the book. Loved it. Till that day looking forward to read this book.

It’s happy coincidence that today I stumbled upon this video.

The video is an engaging account of Rolls Royce Engineer, Stanley Hooker. Although he never qualified as such, he was to perfect and develop WW11 aircraft engines and Super-Chargers that considerably helped Britain’s War Effort. He was an applied Mathematician who directed his considerable insights towards internal combustion engines and then jet engines

And if you are curious, the first Chapter of the book is available here.

 

List Price and Selling Price

I don’t understand a single word of this page but it has this image and its tells the whole story.

 

The discounts on the jumbo jets !!  Via airinsight.com

 

 

The Atoms of the Aerospace Industry

Google plus announced it. Facebook allows it. And sumsung galaxy S4’s camera has it as a standard feature.. Animated gif’s are back on the web.

And I couldn’t agree more as the post on How to create a quick gif in Matlab? is getting quite a lot of hits these days. So here’s one more animated gif for anyone and everyone who is interested to re-learn the nomenclature of a gas turbine blade.

Gas Turbine Blade Nomenclature

It’s a gif version of the powerpoint that I created sometime back.

And if you are wondering about the title of the post, you should read this….

Aero India Show 2013

This Friday visited Aero India Show 2013. I think last edition of the event was better because of MMRCA’s buzz. Here are some of the pics of the show.

Your smartphone matches Mars rover

Curiosity may be the most sophisticated spacecraft ever sent to another planet, but the 900-kilogram rover runs on a computer with the same power as a smartphone. The main computer that controls the rover’s post-landing software has a processing speed of just 200 megahertz, less than half the power of the latest iPhones.

Source: Iphone and Mars Rover

And how we are using the power of our smart phones!!

Polynomial chaos

Its so amazing, when you don’t know about a thing, you never hear or see that thing but once it has entered your consciousness, the thing keeps popping up. Similar thing has happened with me in terms of polynomial chaos. I first heard about in September 2009 and ever since i have been seeing it in so many places.

Since the end of last year, the frequency has doubled.

So what is Polynomial chaos?

This is the best PDF i have read about this topic.. Even wikipedia is not so fruity in explaining it.

 

Don’t see the PDF. Download and view it here. You can use j and k to navigate the pages.

Trent 1000 engine in 150000+ pieces!!

This is something I would love to have in my living room.

Rolls-Royce presents this Lego Trent 1000 engine at the Farnborough show.

It’s awesome.

It has 152,455 Lego bricks.
Weighs 307 kilograms
2 meters long.

It has over 160 separate engine components just arranged like the engine that power the Boeing 787 Dreamlike!

Super.

Never count on making a good sale

Apart from gas turbines and computing one other thing that fascinates me is investing and more appropriately the value investing.

Beginning this year, I am consciously trying to follow the rules of value investing.

This particular rule is the one that has yielded and helped me the most so far.

Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results.” -Warren Buffett

And if you think of this, applies not only to investing!

AS9100 and 2 things

Few weeks back, I attended two day long training on AS9100 rev c.

What is AS9100 Rev C?
Well AS9100C is a quality management standard for the aerospace industry.

It’s basically ISO9001:2009 + aviation, defense and space standards.

If you are interested, this link will spar your appetite.

Or you might want to visit this wikipedia article for a birds eye view on as9100! http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS9100

Well two things clearly stood out for me from that workshop or training that I had.

Firstly documents and record are NOT the same thing and the quality management system is essentially first writing what you are going to do and then doing what you have written.

I am beginning to understand the beauty of the process, if followed properly, its potential is huge.

Few weeks back, I attended two day long training on AS9100 rev c.

What is AS9100 Rev C?
Well AS9100C is a quality management standard for the aerospace industry.

It’s basically ISO9001:2009 + aviation, defense and space standards.

If you are interested, this link will spar your appetite.

Or you might want to visit this wikipedia article for a birds eye view on as9100!

Well two things clearly stood out for me from that workshop or training that I had.

Firstly documents and record are NOT the same thing and the quality management system is essentially first writing what you are going to do and then doing what you have written.

I am beginning to understand the beauty of the process, if followed properly, its potential is huge.

Keeping a journal and being a journalist

At John’s blog The Endevour, read this great analogy. It struck a chord. I am an engineering person at heart and did software as an hobby, but now working on creating engineering software that other engineers use, I know for real what he is talking about.

One of the differences between amateur and professional software development is whether you’re writing software for yourself or for someone else. It’s like the difference between keeping a journal and being a journalist.

People who have only written software for their own use have no idea how much work goes into writing software for others. You have to imagine a thousand things a user might do that you would never do. You have to decide which of these things you will accommodate, and which you will disallow. And when you decide to disallow an action, you have to decide how to do so while causing minimal irritation to the user.

If you develop software and are into engineering, I strongly recommend John’s blog.

Experimental Fluid dynamics and CFD

Was reading an old CFD presentation and came across this.

Theoretical Fluid dynamics: Most important. Everyone HAS to learn it.

Experimental Fluid dynamics: Important. Usually, everyone believes it except the person that conducted the experiment.

Computational Fluid dynamics: Also important. Usually, no one believes it except the person that performed the calculations.

A good engineer understands the pro’s and con’s of all three methods, and should be in a position to assess which one is best under the circumstances.

Top 10 Algorithms of 20th century!

As i was reading this old PDF mentioning the top 10 algorithms of 20th century, was pleasantly surprised to see creation of fortran compiler listed as one of them!

The creation of Fortran may rank as the single most important event in the history of computer programming: Finally, scientists (and others) could tell the computer what they wanted it to do, without having to descend into the netherworld of machine code. Although modest by modern compiler standards—Fortran I consisted of a mere 23,500 assembly-language instructions—the early compiler was nonetheless capable of surprisingly sophisticated computations. As Backus himself recalls in a recent history of Fortran I, II, and III, published in 1998 in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, the compiler “produced code of such efficiency that its output would startle the programmers who studied it.”

Interestingly being in aeronautical/aerospace industry, I have encountered most of the algorithms listed there. Do read the PDF report and see how many of them you have encountered?