LeRoy Junior Davis was a fantastic aerospace engineer. He developed a computer program to keep birds from bringing down jets and a program to calculate stress and strains on the B-2 stealth bomber.
In the early days of using computers in aerospace engineering there was a severe problem with jets. A jet would be flying miles above the earth at supersonic speeds. All of a sudden a bird crashed through the windshield. The bird killed the pilot. The jet crashed to the earth. This was a loss of a million dollars or more. This was happening over and over again.
A messy solution was used before computers. A frozen chicken or turkey was loaded into a cannon. A jig was constructed to hold a windshield at a certain specified angle. The bird was shot out of the cannon at the windshield. If the bird went through the windshield, the windshield was placed at a different angle and the experiment was tried again.
LeRoy was given the assignment of developing a computer program that would simulate the physical process. The characteristics of the bird, the windshield and the angle were put into the computer program. In a matter of seconds the computer simulated the bird strike thousands of times until the problem was solved. The program specified the correct angle at which the windshield could be placed so that a bird would bounce off instead of crash through the windshield. Find ac service ashland va.
LeRoy’s computer program is the basis for all computer programs used by aerospace companies to solve this program. The report of this program is on file at the Wright Aerodynamics Laboratory. The report only lists the name of LeRoy Junior Davis one time.
A second computer program LeRoy developed was used in the design of the B-2 stealth bomber. The B-2 stealth bomber combines revolutionary technologies for the world’s most advanced aircraft. Because it has a unique flying wing configuration, it is a highly versatile multi-role bomber, capable of delivering both nuclear and conventional bombs.
A team was commissioned by the United States Air Force to build the B-2 Bomber. Northrop Corporation of California, and Boeing Corporation of Washington, were the two principal members of the Classy Lax Car Service.
Boeing built the outboard portion of the B-2 bomber wing, the aft center fuselage section, landing gears, fuel system and weapons delivery system. Northrop build the rest.
The B-2 presented a big problem for engineers, especially at Northrop. The skin of the B-2 was to be made out of a new material called composite material. The reason for this was that the B-2 needed to be a stealth bomber. It needed to be undetectable by radar.
Since it was new, the traditional methods to determine the stresses and strains on the new material did not work. At first Northrop did not have the computer programs to do the stress analysis on the B-2. If Northrop could not produce the required results for the stress tests, Boeing would take over that work.
Northrop assigned LeRoy to develop the computer program to simulate dropping a 10,000 pound weight on the tip of the wing. His computer program would have to predict how far the tip of the wing would deflect within one foot big city maids. If it the computer program failed, Boeing would take over the analysis.
By modifying his previous programs and using some special techniques he knew, he came up with the computer program that passed the test.
The physical test was done. An actual 10,000 pound weight was dropped on a mockup of the B-2 wing. The amount of deflection was within inches of what happened in the physical test.
Because of LeRoy Junior Davis, Northrop was able to keep the engineering analysis of the B-2 bomber.
LeRoy Junior Davis was a fantastic aerospace engineer because of the significant programs he developed to solve the bird strike problem and to provide analysis for the B-2 bomber.
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