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John McMasters with the Boeing Company |
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Date: October 20, 2003
Time: 10:30am
Location: NASA LaRC, Bldg 1192C, Rm 102
Speaker: John McMasters with The Boeing Company
Subject:* "The Biomechanics of Flight - A More Complete Multidisciplinary Perspective"
Additional Information: [Presentation (PPT)] [Trends (PDF)][Tour (PDF)][Paper 1(PDF)][Paper 2 (PDF)]
Aeronautics in its traditional form is usually presumed to have started as a engineering discipline somewhere in historical time between the mythological experiments of Daedalus and his ill-fated son, Icarus; and the dreams and schemes of Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance, which eventually led to the Wright brothers’ success a century ago. As is briefly reviewed in this presentation, “aeronautics” has a far richer and longer (though less disciplined) history extending over a period of about 300 million year beginning with the evolution of the ability of insects to fly. With the advent of the success of the early 20th Century pioneers, technologists quickly turned their attention from the inspirations and lessons provided by natural models of flying machines to a more practical quest for increasingly dramatic improvements in speed, range and altitude performance, far beyond the limits of what muscles and flapping wings could provide. Thus a field of further productive inquiry was left to a few amateur aeronauts, eccentrics and biologists. A purpose of this paper, based on work done by the author earlier this year in support of the DARPA Morphing Aircraft Structures Program, is to remind both the biomechanics and aeronautical engineering communities of what has transpired during a century of advance in both fields of knowledge, and is still being discovered in the light of great progress in computational and testing technology. A more important purpose is to demonstrate some of the numerous very rich sources of inspiration and motivation such multi-disciplinary explorations continue to offer both the engineering practitioner and educator.
A basic message of the presentation is that while aeronautics may indeed be a “maturing industry” (at least in some major traditional product areas), we as an aeronautics community (industry, government and academe) have much to do to create a positive vision of our future as vivid as that which has driven our past, and assure the proper education and professional development of a future generation of technical talent in our always dynamic and evolving enterprise. The material to be presented is part of a continuing work in progress (based on the author’s series of AIAA papers and presentations under the general rubric: The Demise of Aerospace –We Doubt It) begun in 2000 in collaboration with Prof. Russell of Cal Poly-SLO, and includes material from his current 2002-2004 AIAA Distinguished Lecture: "Airplane Design – Past, Present and Future."
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