Speedboat100
Well-Known Member
Speaking from the perspective of a mechanical engineer (but not the kind who has done much practical work with structures), one oft-overlooked part of any new design is testing, testing, testing. Good test engineers are worth just as much as good structural engineers.
For instance, my background is autonomous flying robotics (aka drones). I can-- and have-- written a lot of autopilot code but I don't really have the easy ability to test it. (It's hard to test flight code from a city center, or when the season is inclement, or when I don't have access to the right kind of aircraft.) Some of my happiest days were writing autopilot code that others were then able to go fly that very minute. I had a tight collaboration with my testers.
But a good tester isn't just a crash-test dummy. Test engineering is not done seat-of-the-pants any more than structural engineering is. It is, however, much more experience driven than theory driven. So it can-- and can only-- be learned outside of formal classroom environments.
The upshot is that if you can figure out how to offer excellent test skills to a designer, the designer might be able to offer you excellent design skills in return. If this sounds useful to you, my advice might be to develop and market the kind of test skills that we're looking for. Then its win-win for all involved.
I agree 100 %...you have to work on it.
I was just wondering as I have a structural innovations that would it possible to make them into ½ scale and run loads accordingly in relation to the scale.
Can the test results from exactly similar structure be valid also in 1:1 scale ?
The benefit of this would be less work in the actual testing...also I find it very difficult to find several hundreds of kg:s of weights to actually make 1:1 testing for a wing .
To put is shortly...could I assume the real plane is safe if the ½ scale model of it has been tested to + 10 G and -5 Gs ?
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