“Just Launched: The Questions of a Newly Graduated Aerospace Engineer”
“Cleared for Takeoff: An Aerospace Graduate’s Search for Purpose”
“Engines Off, Mind On: Life After an Aerospace Engineering Degree”

Career paths (industry vs. research vs. academia)
Further studies (master’s, PhD, specialization)
Skills to build (software, certifications, languages)
Jobs (how to get into companies.)
Startups, innovation, or entrepreneurship in aerospace
Or anything else — even life beyond engineering

Guidance: sensors and algorithms in systems that determine where a vehicle should go. This is my favorite of all subject currently.

Sensors like gyroscopes, accelerometers, GPS, star trackers, or inertial navigation systems (INS) to know its current position, velocity, and orientation.

Actuators: These are mechanisms like gimbaled engines (engines that can pivot), reaction control thrusters, or aerodynamic control surfaces (fins, canards) that physically steer the rocket.
Control Algorithms: The control system takes the guidance commands and turns them into actuator inputs. It uses feedback from sensors to continuously adjust the rocket’s attitude (orientation) and trajectory.

Path planning: Defining a trajectory or path that a vehicle follows (e.g., for a drone, spacecraft, or missile).

Navigation: How the system determines its current position and orientation. This involves GPS, inertial measurement units (IMUs), star trackers, etc.

Trajectory optimization: Optimizing the path for fuel efficiency, time, or other constraints.

Control: Once you know where you want the vehicle to go, control algorithms ensure that it actually reaches its destination and behaves correctly. This involves:
Stabilization: Ensuring that the vehicle remains stable during flight (e.g., maintaining roll, pitch, yaw).
Flight control systems: These systems ensure that a vehicle follows the planned trajectory, and often involves using PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) controllers or more advanced control strategies like model predictive control (MPC).
Actuators: These are the devices that control the physical movement of the vehicle (e.g., thrust vector control, control surfaces like flaps, ailerons, or reaction control systems for spacecraft).

Efficient wind tunnel testing for the Aerospace Industries

Trends in aviation involve a continuous pressure to increase performance, all the while reducing pollutant and environmental noise emission. And even with the industry’s recent efforts in aircraft noise reduction, airframe noise generated by landing gear, flaps, slats or other high-lift devices are still significant contributors to aircraft acoustic emissions, especially during approach and landing. Wind tunnel testing help investigate new aircraft concepts, verify performance of innovative designs, and validate prediction models. Thanks to increasing computational power, more models are used in design phases, and wind tunnel testing is the ultimate way to validate these models long before the aircraft can actually fly. However, wind tunnel testing typically involves high costs linked to the preparation of the test item and operation of the wind tunnel and must be performed efficiently to get the most out of the limited testing time. Siemens, in cooperation with its partner MicrodB, has developed a highly efficient solution for aeroacoustic wind tunnel testing. This solution allows detailed and accurate aeroacoustic measurements through its data acquisition system, the latest processing algorithms and customized acoustic array techniques. Measurements are best done in an integrated platform, where multi-physics testing, both for aerodynamics and aeroacoustics are conducted to gain the most insights possible into aircraft performance, and especially into noise generation mechanisms. Moreover, the productivity of the tests is of utmost importance and fast processing techniques are essential. Through smart data management and run comparison, many aircraft configurations can be tested and evaluated in a minimum time. Read More