Design for Failure, Build for Success

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According to Murphy's Law, "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." While it is not a law that can really be tested or proven easily, it certainly seems to be correct more times than it is wrong. If that is the case though, why are so many things built for optimal conditions? That is the question researchers at MIT looked at and starting working with for airplane designs.

Modern airplanes are technological feats from rudder to cabin and engine to landing gear. Every system on board could potentially fail, and many do during the life of the aircraft. These partial failures may not always endanger an aircraft, but some can, and all should be repaired as quickly as possible. What the researchers have done though is considered how to design planes that can take a failure in stride, thanks to the geometry of the aircraft. For example, a faulty rudder or impaired engine could cause instability in the plane's flight, but by making the tail larger, the instability is damped out.

While this kind of thinking in the design of aircraft is something many people would appreciate, like those in the Air Force and on airplanes, it is not something that comes easy to many engineers. Typically engineers design perfect systems that operate at peak performance. Changing the geometry of a plane in preparation for it not operating at its peak is not obvious to them. The hope of the MIT researchers is to show the world that designing for imperfect operation is a good idea.

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invidious on June 19, 2012 10:57AM Your lack of understanding of the aerospace industry and the engineering that takes place is staggering and kind of insulting. The amount of design, testing and analysis that goes into certifying an aircraft for commercial flight is immense. Nothing in your third paragraph is even remotely accurate. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. reply to this

Guest_Jim_* on June 19, 2012 12:01PM I do apologize for offending you but when covering any news of a field I am not perfectly versed in I must rely on my source, in this case MIT. I recommend you read the final section of the source which, perhaps with better words than mine, covers the idea I was attempting to convey in that third paragraph. Here is a quote from that section: Many engineers are perfectionists, so deliberately designing something that's not going to be fully functional is hard. The MIT news service allows for comments to be posted to their items, if you would like to post a similar comment there. reply to this

Anon on June 19, 2012 07:57PM What is your field, Jim, and the qualifications you've obtained in it? reply to this

Anon on June 21, 2012 05:00PM *bump* reply to this

Guest_Jim_* on June 22, 2012 05:22AM Sorry about not replying sooner. My degree is in mathematics and I have a minor in physics. Those are the actual qualifications with everything else, like writing news here for over a year and writing a book, just being experiences. reply to this

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