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and now – instead of using massive computing power to calculate how a design will perform – engineers can give the requirement to a computer and instruct it to tell them what the component should look like. Answers to that – on components like aero engine fan blades – can be shapes that no designer would previously have predicted. CAD/CAM integrates all the pieces in an engine or aeroplane – so detail draughtsmen are no longer an essential part of the programme – and all the pieces will fit together, which wasn’t always the case. Systems can even simulate taking parts off an engine – the weight is simulated in your hands.
thanks to the pioneering work of Frank Whittle (soon to become Sir Frank). While the war relied on the Merlin and Griffon piston aero engines, the jet entered service with 616 Squadron in Gloster Meteors in 1944. Post war, Hives was the first in the world to commit to a future in gas turbine propulsion, and the achievements of Rolls-Royce plc today would have thrilled Royce.
Cars and aero engines have become
less and less alike since the war, but both have moved with the times in embracing information technology. So much can now be modelled and simulated that development has become less “suck it and see” and more the essential proving of predictions. The number of development units in a programme has reduced markedly,
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Design – be it for motor cars or aero engines – and verification that the design intent has been achieved have moved to a level Royce would never have been able to envisage. What would he have thought of today’s capabilities? I believe he would have been amazed. But such was his “compleat” approach that I believe it would have taken him next to no time to grasp its significance and potential. “You have evidently got it right,” he would no doubt have said, “but I think you could improve it.”
Above: A Battle of Britain Merlin III engine. Opposite: A supercharged Griffon