This Week in Engineering

Bell Helicopter has won a major contract to supply the Pentagon with a new, multirole and speedy light attack aircraft. It’s a tiltrotor, and it defeated a competing coaxial compound helicopter from a Lockheed/Boeing consortium. Tilt rotors aren’t new, with V-22 Osprey variants operating in U.S. military service for years, but detractors of that program have pointed to high early accident rates an...

Nuclear energy for electricity generation has been the standard application for civilian nuclear power since the industry began seven decades ago. Heat produces steam, which spins a turbine—technology which uses readily available processes developed in coal, oil and gas burning power plants for over a century. Space and process heat, however, are major energy demands for cities and in industry, an...

With the successful launch of Artemis 1, NASA is back in the crewed space exploration business, with the largest rocket successfully launched anywhere. The combined 8,000,000 pounds of thrust at launch exceeds the power of the Saturn V launch vehicle that carried a dozen astronauts to the moon. The new system uses developments of legacy Space Shuttle engines and solid rocket boosters, with a boost...

The commercial aircraft business is a brutal one. The cost to develop and certify a new airframe is enormous, and any major technological advance carries risk that can be existential for the developing company. Boeing famously gambled the company on the 747 and was rewarded for success with a production program that has run for half a century. Today, costs are even higher, but in the critical mids...

In the race to truly commercialize orbital space launch, the guidance problem has largely been solved. Light and heavy lift orbit is relatively routine, but the cost of lifting every ounce to even low earth orbit is still an inhibiting factor in widespread exploitation of near-Earth space. Several companies are working to reduce these costs, notably Elon Musk's SpaceX. But there are competitors, i...

The use of drones for military purposes has a long history. The concept dates to World War I, and pilotless explosive-laden aircraft were used extensively by Germany in World War II. Remotely controlled precision attack drones were developed by the United States near the end of World War II, but despite predictions in the many decades after that war, crewed combat aircraft continued to rule the co...

The combustion of fossil fuels is widely thought of as the cause of global CO2 emissions. While it is the major contributor, many process industries are large emitters as well, and many of those have few alternative technologies to reduce CO2 production. CF Industries, a large manufacturer of hydrogen and nitrogen products, has signed an agreement with ExxonMobil to capture and store CO2 generated...

In the aerospace industry, big military contracts can come in two ways: low-volume, high value platforms, and the opposite, multirole aircraft with enough development potential to sustain production over decades. The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk is an example of the latter, in production since 1979 and still on the line today, with about 4000 produced so far. The replacement rotorcraft for such a suc...

Spaceflight is hard, and dangerous. From the beginnings of crewed spaceflight in the early 1960s, ejection seats and launch escape rockets were designed to carry astronauts and cosmonauts away from the fireball of an exploding booster. Launch escape rockets can be carried on top of the spacecraft and lift it off tractor-style or be mounted under the capsule and push it free of the upper stages. Ej...

Each generation of wireless communications technology has triggered significant and important social and economic changes. The telegraph, the telephone, microwave relays and satellite medications all made distances effectively smaller and local operations national in scale. Wireless is done the same, with each generation of service offering more bandwidth and faster download speeds, enabling new s...

It’s no secret that the state-of-the-art in manufacturing technology varies widely by industry sector and by enterprise scale. Large, R&D-heavy OEMs in the automotive, aerospace, energy and defence sectors have access to and implement the latest technologies, such as advanced additive manufacturing. The supply chain that supports those companies, however, have varying abilities—from capability...

Commercial aviation is growing rapidly in China. The emergence of a relatively affluent middle-class, plus new more maintainable and fuel-efficient airliners are making China the must win market for air-framers worldwide. To date, this has been good news for Boeing and Airbus, but Chinese maker COMAC has started production of an efficient small jet that is aimed squarely at the sweet spot in the m...

Hypersonic missiles were used for the first time in combat last month in Ukraine, as Russian jets launched Kinzhal missiles from jet fighters. Hypersonic missiles are fast, flying at speeds of Mach 5 or faster, and when combined with a flat trajectory compared to ballistic missiles and maneuverability, they present a difficult problem for defense. Hypersonic missiles are under development as long-...

Housing affordability all over the world has been closely tied to traditional supply and demand equilibria. Nations with growing economies and growing populations need more housing, yet the combination of cost, land availability, regulatory and environmental considerations has resulted in a significant lag between the time that housing is needed in the time that it is built. In America, Freddie Ma...

Navigation aircraft used to be a simple business. Early pilots often used roadmaps and flew low enough to read the names of towns from water towers and grain silos. Longer-range aircraft brought with them the need for a dedicated navigator, who used the sun and stars just as shipboard navigators did for centuries. The development of satellite-based global positioning systems, however, au...

Internal combustion engines are all about volumetric efficiency. Like all heat engines, higher combustion temperatures mean greater efficiency, but those high combustion chamber temperatures and pressures form an ideal process for creating oxides of nitrogen in the exhaust gas stream. NOx has long been known as a major contributor to photochemical smog, and the state of California has had uniquely...

Generative design is widely regarded as the Holy Grail of design engineering automation. Simply press a button, and have artificial intelligence create an optimized part. It's a supremely difficult challenge, and, like autonomous driving, is much more difficult than it appears. Engineering.com's design engineering expert Roopinder Tara discusses the state-of-the-art in generative design with Jim A...

The Finnish power utility TVO has open the first new European nuclear plant in 15 years. The pressurized light water reactor is the product of a French/German design team and promises to deliver as much as 15 percent of the nation’s total electricity needs. Although it is a decade behind schedule and billions of Euros over the original cost estimates, the plant promises to deliver clean power for...

The recently opened 1915 Çanakkale Bridge in Turkey is an engineering marvel. The world’s largest suspension bridge, the project was thought to be technically impossible as late as the mid-1990s but has emerged as a key link between Europe and Asia. The bridge required very high towers and large, submerged caissons built on-site, as well as advanced project management and planning. Some 4,000 work...

For the first time in half a century, NASA is preparing to launch a moon rocket. After multiple delays and redesigns, the giant Artemis 1 vehicle has rolled to the launch pad for the first in a series of final rehearsals for an unmanned Orion spacecraft mission around the moon. The combination of the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft has been in development since the end of the space shuttl...

In the aerospace industry, airframe programs can last for decades. The 747, for example, has sustained a fifty-year production run, but maintaining legacy airframes presents a significant engineering problem: aircraft designed on paper blueprints and early CAD systems are still in service, and replacement parts and modifications are still needed. Translating old renderings into forms that can be u...

Lighter than air flying machines predate the invention of the airplane, and open so the 1930s, were the only practical way to carry passengers are significant payloads over transatlantic distances. The combination of the 1936 Hindenburg disaster and the development of longer-range fixed wing aircraft ended the age of the rigid airship, but a new hybrid type aircraft that combines features of airsh...

Decarbonization of transportation is a high priority in the battle to reach Paris Accord CO2 targets, but in heavy trucks and industrial power, there are few alternatives to fossil fuels with current technology. Cummins Inc., a large diesel engine maker, has developed a series of fuel agnostic diesel engines for commercial use that can run on diesel fuel, natural gas, or hydrogen gas. If run on bl...

There are several technologies under development to harness the almost unlimited potential of nuclear fusion. Tokomaks, stellarators, and even mechanical compression in liquid metals are underactive development, but a California-based firm, TAE Technologies, is developing a novel, linear approach that combines plasmas with linear particle accelerator physics. TAE projects that this unique approach...

Flying taxis have been dreamed about for decades, but the combination of several technologies available today may make them a reality soon. Boeing has announced a $450 million investment in eVTOL aircraft developer Wisk, who intend to make mass producible, autonomous and electrically powered light aircraft for air taxi service. Wisk has flown prototypes under FAA’s Experimental certification, and...