"There is no such thing as a small miracle in aviation."
(⇓ Scroll to the bottom for the answer.)
Air travel seems to be back to its pre-pandemic level. We tend to complain about long flights, small seats, and occasional rude flight attendants, but I try to remind myself that it is practically a miracle that we can fly at all.
New Rigaku website: fresh look with the same great content
Our imaging web content just moved to our corporate website, rigaku.com. It might look a little different, but all content, including the past webinars, blog articles, and application notes, is still there.
Thank you for joining us for the Decoding Defects webinar series last month. The recording and resources are available on our website.
The next episode will go live on Wednesday, April 24, at 10 am CDT. Our new team member, Ted Huang, will provide an overview and examples of structural failure analysis.
He will define what structural failure is and discuss how it manifests in materials and designed parts in the form of cracks, pores, etc. He will also review where failure analysis is used in various industries and research areas and what could go wrong if it is neglected. He will share examples of structural failure analysis using X-ray CT.
Recommended article: The use of X-ray computed tomography for design and process modeling of aerospace composites: A review
I'm in Japan this week. I come here a couple of times a year to visit our headquarters in Tokyo and see my family. It takes roughly 14 hours to fly from Houston to Narita. We often complain about the long flight, small seats, lack of leg space, expensive tickets, etc., but I find it amazing that that massive chunk of metal with hundreds of people onboard can fly at all, let alone it takes only 14 hours to fly 6,636 miles. The Boeing 789 can weigh 254,700 kg or 561,500 lb (maximum takeoff weight).
A lot is involved in making this miracle happen, and the use of advanced composite materials is one of them. Composites are light and strong, ideal for aircraft. They are used everywhere. See Figure 1 in this review paper, for example.
The authors say, "Optimization of process parameters of major aerospace composites manufacturing techniques is essential for manufacturing high-quality aerospace components. However, studying many parameters through experimental approaches is time-consuming and labor-intensive." X-ray CT has provided the imaging study of composite materials to assist the optimization process. In recent years, modern CT analysis techniques have enabled process optimization, replacing expensive and time-consuming experiments with simulation-based approaches.
The review covers recent progress in using X-ray CT for design and process optimization of aerospace composite manufacturing, underlying principles, and the techniques' limitations. It is a comprehensive review of modern X-ray CT analysis and its application to composite materials but also an interesting read for anyone interested in X-ray CT or aerospace engineering.
"The use of X-ray computed tomography for design and process modeling of aerospace composites: A review," K. Naresh et al., Materials and Design 190 (2020) 108553,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2020.108553
Neural Networks by 3Blue1Brown I have mentioned these videos many times in my webinars, but if you are interested in deep learning and have not watched this playlist, I highly recommend it. Two new episodes about generative AI have been added recently.
