Did a fuel line give way? Did a fuel pump not shut down as it should? Did a fitting of some sort fail? Investigators will be looking at all those possibilities from the fire and explosion on the left engine of a China Airlines B-737-809 yesterday as it stood parked at the gate at Naha Airport in Okinawa, Japan. Fortunately, there were no fatalies. After the flames were extinguished, the crumpled fuselage resemmbled a beached whale.
In investigating the accident, I did not turn to CNN or the NYTImes. Rather, I look at sites like Planecrashinfo.com and 1001.com. Digging into these sites are not for the squeamish flyer who hears every odd noise and feels every bump. Err, that would be me. I estimate I’ver flown at least 1.5 million miles, almost all of it on commercial jetliners. My only brushes with disaster were severe turbulence and an on-the-taxiway fender bender.
Anyhow, there’s an amazing amount verbiage, hair-raising accounts, sounds and videos about plane crashes on the web. Did you know, American Airlines has had 38 accidents since 1931? Do you want to read or hear the last words from pilots and co-pilots (this one offers a warning that it may be "disturbing" to some.) How about an account from Delta 767 pilot who took right behind United Flight 93 on 9-11? How about fatal events per millions of flights?
For someone who flies, viewing these stats and stories seems like tempting fate. But I feel better when internalizing this reassuring statistic from Planecrashinfo.com: "If a passenger boarded a flight at random, once a day, every day, it would be approximately 22,000 years before he or she would be killed."
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
The push to achieving more intelligent, integrated manufacturing is putting a strong focus on networking and connectivity as key enabling technologies.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
0 
