Category Archives: Engineering

Hot stuff

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Amplitude of temperature fluctuations in a turbine blade from a jet engine during a vibration test at 700Hz

There have been no postings for a while because I have been away.  Last week I organised a workshop in Glasgow for engineers in industry and academic on [how we can make] ‘Strain Measurements in Extreme Environments’.  Although this included making measurements on large and fast engineering components, half of the workshop was focussed on evaluating strain at high temperatures, 1000°C to 2000°C, which is hot by most standards.  This is beyond the operating range of most sensors and most materials that remain solid at these temperatures glow, which makes optical measurements challenging.

So why are we interested?  For hypersonic flight including applications such as delivering satellites into orbit.  And, because engines become more efficient when operating at high temperatures.

Can we do it? Not in the real-world but in a laboratory environment some research groups have been successfully using digital image correlation with ceramic particles creating a textured pattern on the hot surface that can be tracked as the hot stuff deforms.

Two Earths

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An enormous amount of time and money are expended on developing engineering simulations and establishing their credibility using information from experiments.  You could ask: why? After all for structural reliability we could just use more or stronger material to avoid unexpected failures.  One answer is that more or stronger material either costs more and, or weigh more.  The additional weight requires the use of more resources, including more energy for manufacturing and operation of engineering machines, structures and systems.  Engineers have a responsibility to support a shift by society to use less resources while achieving the same standard of living, because to provide the same standard of living enjoyed by the average European (North American) citizen to everyone on this planet would require the resources of two (four) more earths using our current technology*.  The latest pictures from the Curiosity Rover on Mars suggest that our nearest neighbour isn’t going to be of much use to us.

*Based on average ecological footprint of 2.5 acres per person in the developing world, 13.5 acres per person in the UK and 24 acres per person in the USA.  For more on this theme see Edward O. Wilson, ‘The Future of Life’, The 2001 John H. Chafee Memorial Lecture.

[Picture Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Image by Reto Stöckli (land surface, shallow water, clouds). Enhancements by Robert Simmon (ocean color, compositing, 3D globes, animation). Data and technical support: MODIS Land Group; MODIS Science Data Support Team; MODIS Atmosphere Group; MODIS Ocean Group Additional data: USGS EROS Data Center (topography); USGS Terrestrial Remote Sensing Flagstaff Field Center (Antarctica); Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (city lights).]

Why ‘Mechanics’?

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Perhaps it is obvious, but I think it was probably negligent of me to assume that the reason for studying mechanics needed no explanation.  If an aircraft flies through a hailstorm, then in advance the passengers and crew would like to know that it will survive the event, and after the event the owners and operators would to know whether it can continue to be flown safely.  Mechanics is the core discipline or field that underpins such knowledge.  It is concerned with the way materials and, or structures (e.g. the aircraft skin) behave when acted upon by a load (impact by hail stones).

Since everything involved in this examples is solid, this type of analysis is usually called solid mechanics.  Whereas predicting the lift and drag on the aircraft wings as they are pushed through the air by the engines is classified as fluid mechanics.

Everyday examples of both solid mechanics and fluid mechanics have been collected together to assist in introducing engineering students to these fields and can be found at http://www.EngineeringExamples.org and http://www.EngageEngineering.org

Art and Experimental Mechanics

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Experimental mechanics is about measuring the behaviour of materials and structures when they are subjected to a load. The picture shows the photoelastic fringe pattern in a plastic model of a crane hook, from which a load has been suspended. The fringes are contours of stress (force per unit area) and where the fringes or contours congregate are sites of likely failure. Using polarised light, photoelastic fringes can be seen in any stressed transparent object, for example make a sandwich of two pairs of polarised sunglasses and a transparent freezer bag then stretch the freezer bag while holding the sandwich to the light. Yes, ok you will need two pairs of hands.

Photoelasticity has fallen out of fashion in experimental mechanics because, except for objects made from glass or transparent plastic, it cannot be used directly on engineering components. However, this photograph is an old favourite that has been used to illustrate several mechanics books and inspired an art installation in the Engineering Library at the University of Sheffield. It was taken in the 1980s by John A Driver, a technician in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sheffield.

For more a little more on photoelasticity see http://www.experimentalstress.com/basic_experimental_mechanics/photoelasticity.htm