Aerospace Engineering

The field of aerospace technology offers a wide range of employment opportunities to those with the proper educational background. An aerospace team is made up of engineers, scientists, and technicians. Positions are available through the private sector as well as within the U. S. Government. Examples of major engineering roles in the aerospace industry include:

►Analysis

►Design

►Materials and Processes

►Systems Engineering

►Software Development

►Manufacturing

►Flight Research

►Field Service

People working on these areas as an aerospace engineer should have familiarity and exposure to NASTRAN and MAT LAB with knowledge on space environment and modeling of flexible dynamics. These aerospace engineers will be responsible to conduct stress analysis on metallic and composite structures. NASTRAN, IDEAD, Oracle, and PATRAN proficiency level is required. Their duties also include on aircraft, which are metallic and composite structures. This includes and understanding of control surface stiffness and loop calculations, finite element modeling (FEM), fatigue testing requirement and analysis.

Generally, a Bachelor's Degree in Aerospace Engineering is required to work as an aerospace engineer. The University of Texas offers this degree as well as Master's and Doctorate programs. Successful aerospace engineers have the proper educational background, possess good communication skills, and are committed to being a part of a team.

This is the widely used analog simulator, which was developed at electronics research lab of California University.

The full form of SPICE is Simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis.

Aerospace Engineers are involved in all aspects of aeronautics (working with aircraft) and astronautics (working with spacecraft). They conduct research, and design and develop vehicles and systems for atmospheric and space environments. These engineers often specialize in one of many areas such as aerodynamics, propulsion, flight mechanics, orbital mechanics, fluids, structures, guidance & control, and computation.

People working on these areas as aerospace engineers should have familiarity and exposure to NASTRAN and MATLAB with knowledge on space environment and modeling of flexible dynamics. These aerospace engineers will be responsible to work in the areas of structural control, momentum control, line of sight (LOS), spacecraft mission design, control of space boards payloads, operational engineering.

The testing of small rocket engines and entails development by researching on aerospace. They are responsible to perform and experiment on laboratory facility, which is dedicated to aerospace. One should be capable of solving problems by applying knowledge by solving problem of the research done. They will be working with technical team of researchers and they should have ability handle projects alone.

Aeronautical engineering works on tunnel tests, analyzing flight test data, manned space flights, planning future space missions, spacecraft operations, designing and testing robotic systems, developing new propulsion system, computing optimum flight trajectories, developing communication systems for distance space probes and designing new rockets.

Astronautical engineer includes designing power systems for spacecraft structure, developing communications systems for distant space probes, developing hardware skills for operations in spacecraft, designing and testing robotic systems, developing new propulsion systems and computing optimum flight.

Each job profile even in aerospace industry differs from others. Mainly in aerospace, there are two branches or field. One is aeronautical and other is astronautical engineering.

► Electronic warfare has three main elements:

ES - Electronic support - This has high passive acquisition intelligence about friend and foe

EA - Electronic attack - that has passive and active denial of RF spectrum

EP - Electronic protection protects friendly personnel and assets by active and passive techniques.

Professional Engineer license is required for people who aspire to go in as officially approved engineer. The design specification is done by self-employed people or working in small business. General aerospace engineers work for government or for big companies and hence few people are not very keen on becoming PE?s. To become a PE one has to pass an exam on fundamentals of engineering which takes alot of hours to gruel and work under a licensed PE for about four years. In addition, they have to grow through a principle and practice of engineering exam, which requires about 8 hours.

Aerospace engineering deals with design and manufacture of aircraft or spacecraft structures, craft guidance systems, control and navigation's systems, developing tools for communication and finally the production of the aircraft or spacecraft. Each of these areas of aerospace engineering is crucial for efficient functioning of the aircraft or spacecraft. Hence, aerospace engineering has been divided appropriately and knowledge is imparted to aspiring engineers in each of these areas along with the necessary practical training to equip them to deal with the challenges in this field.

Stress is a result that is caused when a solid e.g. metal bar is subjected to an external force. Stress is defined as force per unit area and the basic unit includes MN/m2, N/mm2 and Pa. There are basically three types of stress:

► Tensile stress: it is the stress that is setup when the force tries to pull the material apart.

► Compressive stress: it is the stress that is produced by the force that is trying to crush the material.

► Shear stress: is the stress that results from the force that tends to cut through the material i.e. tend to put one material slide over another one.

Strain is when a material is altered in shape, this happens due to the fact that the force is acting on the material. The body is strained internally as well as externally without having any differences of dimension but it just has the differences at the atomic level. It is the ratio of change in dimension over the original dimension. It is very important due to the fact that building an aircraft requires the knowledge of these factors and the formulas that are associated with it to successfully implementing the parts together. There are three types of strain:

► Tensile strain

► Compressive strain and

► Shear strain