The American Scene; Engineering Development '59

Good morning. My name is Joel Zanger. This is the American scene. We thought here at the American scene that since this is the beginning of the new year and since we issue from the Illinois Institute of Technology, this Sunday morning might be a good opportunity for us to take a kind of inventory of the years achievements in technology. To discuss certainly not all of the important things that happened, but a number of the most critical of those which possibly will influence all of us, we have two guests this morning. Our first guest is Dr. Nicholas A. Will, who is the Director of the Mechanical Engineering Research Division of the Armor Research Foundation of IIT. Our second guest is Mr. John Neff. He is the Director of the Ceramics Research Division of the Armor Research Foundation of IIT. I wonder if we can start gentlemen with possibly that one subject in technology which if not the most important certainly makes the most headlines and that of course is space. Every time we either achieve putting something into space or fail, we all as Americans are terribly concerned with it for a great variety of reasons, only some of

which are of course technical. But I thought we could we start with this whole area of what's happened in the past year in in space. Space probes, missiles and so on. Be pleased to Jews. We can say a few words about it. I think that when you want to discuss space there are four major problems that you have to know about. First of all, what is it that you will encounter in space? Secondly, by what means do you propose to get out there? Thirdly, what can the human body or the individual endure while in space and fourthly the materials that would be necessary to achieve this accomplishment? As to what we know about space, I think is at the moment not too complete but we had made a number of significant steps forward in the understanding of the conditions to be encountered in space. One that was achieved during the year was the discovery of the so -called Ben Allen radiation belts, the relatively high density of electrons that one would encounter. In fact if you want to have a tutorial representation of this thing it is shown in

a slide that we have prepared for the purpose. Could we see that first slide? On the slide you will see the density of electrons in space as you notice there are two relatively light areas on the slide showing the do not shape this position of electrons which of belts, radiation belts which in some cases reach up to 10 ,000 electrons per second in density. That's one of the results of the space probes that we have successfully acquired. It definitely is. It's a result of investigations conducted during the US Geophysical Year and it was one of major achievements of the space probes end up by the United States. What does this mean versus a problem of this at least thicker electron belts? These are dangerous physically? They physically could damage a person provided he would reside in these electron belts or radiation belts for an extensive period and as a result if you want to avoid them you have to get out through the holes which would be at the north or south pole. By way of how do we accomplish before

the accomplishment it has also been discovered that temperature for instance increases as you go farther away from the earth. It has been assumed as you may know that you would gradually approach absolute zero as you go out in reality this is not the case. Although at the same time that this happens density decreases as a result of temperature effect as such is not too much of a problem. We have a slide here that shows for instance density decrease with elevation or height from the surface of the earth. I think it is shown in the slide here. As you will see on the very cold scale is plotted the height from the surface and on the horizontal scale is the density and the higher you go the lower drops the density of matter from per unit of volume involved. As you leave earth you say the density becomes less but the heat becomes greater. This is right. And as far as we know the farther you go the greater the heat will

become. As far as we know there is no drop of point. As far as we know now it would be nice to know what happens farther out at the moment this is not determined. As I said however it is not a major problem because as matters now stand most of your heat received or dissipated would be done by radiation from the sun at least as long as you are within a reasonable distance from the sun. You see obviously Dr. Wheel doesn't have very much concern for the materials problems involved here. We'll get into that later, Joe. Now if I may let me say a few words as to what is planned now or what has been accomplished. One of the first space probes were attempts at launching a man into space was the X -15 experimental plane. We have a picture of this here. This was a plane propelled by rockets and reached a very considerable attitude. It returned to the earth by the so -called glide principle short stubby wings landed on its own power without any propulsive help. There was a man in this plane. There was a man in this plane the X -15 and it has been flown repeatedly

successfully at times it was launched in fact most often from the valley of a bomber of B -29. We had gone beyond this point now and there are serious investigations being conducted to design and launch a man into space. You probably know about the Russian successes with the dog Laika and the comparable American success it was. Successes were the same. The monkey. Essentially this is a full runner of getting a man up into space by about the same principles. The project is called the project Mercury in which a man would be encased in space caps. You will shut up by means of a single or more stage rocket. I'm confused here for a moment. I thought the X -15 took a man into space. Now you speak of the problem of getting a man into space. Clearly there are different kinds of space here involved. Well to a degree yes I don't know the exact altitude reached with the X -15 but I believe it was somewhere on the order of several miles something like 15 to 20 miles. This is not really space you're still in the reasonably dense atmosphere. It is when you get up to several

hundred miles that you can consider being in space. In fact in an area where you can maintain an orbital trajectory for a substantial time without being slowed down by the density of the atmosphere and plummeting back to Earth. With the X -15 you could not have done this. These so -called space probes will actually enable a man to go up into space to orbit for a three -determined length of time several times around the Earth. We slowed down by the true rockets if necessary and we recovered or returned to the surface of the globe by either the glide principle same as the X -15 you'd have wings and slowly glide your way down or else by the drag principle which would mean that by the time you slow down and start falling you use a parachute or some other device to slow your descent and to break the fall. Now this is just finally I suppose to that whole problem of the materials which will carry the man up there in the first place. You can say that John, that's really your area. Well this is really an excellent opportunity for me to complain a little bit about the infinite variety of

designs that are brought off the drafting boards by the scientists the technicians without regard at all for the materials from which they're going to make these objects. Now back in the you know man's development has really been more or less categorized by materials. It was a stone age man. Certainly the stone age man didn't spend very much time thinking about the problems that he would encounter when stone was no longer hard enough. I doubt very much if very many stone age men gave very much thought to developing bronze yet we have the bronze age. Now the bronze age man certainly got along quite well without very much thought for what was going to be necessary when bronze is no longer suitable to these problems. So then we had the iron age. I don't know that I have a very interesting observation. I had recently that the heatites were in possession of knowing how to make iron. At the same time the Egyptians were not and they uncovered some tablets recently in which the Egyptian far always begging to be known to to

have it disclosed in what the method is by which you make iron and the heatites slightly refused. This goes today too. It just goes to show you how valuable material knowledge is. Well technology today is really pushed to our existing materials to the absolute limit of the environment which they put. There's the oxidation problem there is the problem of high temperature. We are at the threshold of a dire need for new technology and materials development. The Mollier plane themselves have made the materials of marginal application, the speed, the weight of the plane itself, the distances they travel. If I can interrupt again for a stone, I will have an opportunity to argue with you about this. It seems to me that past progress was always a matter of give and take. At times the metallurgists said we have the materials if only you people could design the airplane that would go with it or the vehicle if you wish that would go with it. Then at times we got ahead of you people and we had the cries from the metallurgists or the

ceramics or the materials people saying it is impossible to design materials for this purpose and for these services. Today it seems to be the case that we would gladly go farther and be able to make substantial advances provided. Only you people could come up with the materials necessary for them. Well this is true in a great variety of areas. I know the architects complain very frequently that the materials they want are not really available. New glasses for example, bronze and steel and so on. But they are again jules. The architect wants it for a building that has to go up in the next six months. He doesn't want to wait for six years as you can for a design. The architect may have a building on the boards or an airplane that may be on the boards a lead time of six to eight years. Once that design is finished then they want the material immediately and that is where the materials people come in for a great deal of criticism. We do not provide these materials that are surviving needed whether it's a new building, a missile, a plane, any piece of hardware. Let me ask you this. I think that if we could go to a service limitation say designated by 3000

degrees Fahrenheit and comparable tolerable stress levels so that you could make structures out of it we could live happily with space. What would be your recommendation at this stage for research to be done in these directions? Well I think that research in materials, let's go back a little bit. When the Wright brothers developed their first airplane of course they had cast iron and a low greatest steel to make the engines out of that was available so they go ahead and make the wooden canvas two wooden canvas two would stand the strain at service purpose. Then in World War one when the Liberty Motors the V8s and V12s came into existence aluminum had been developed to the point where aluminum alloys would suffice for the job. Then at the beginning of World War two the radio motors had a high exhaust temperature and once again we had exhaust valves that would stand a thousand degrees Fahrenheit to withstand that. Now when we come to jet engines as soon as we then they turn to ceramic materials traditional. Could you define the distinction? What do you mean by

ceramic? I know for most of us at least ceramic tends to mean that pot which we have a plant growing or that teacup. People who throw their own pots on wheels and the basement. They are ceramics. That's true. You might be amazed Jules at how many points in your life ceramics is the difference between well your automobile starting for example. You wouldn't have the automobile be on the first place if you weren't for the ceramic spark plugs. Chances are the separators and the storage battery that turns over the engineering ceramics. A general definition of ceramics is rather hard to give in today's technology. It might be defined as the heat chemistry of silica and associated or allied minerals. That's sort of a mouthful but Portland cement is a ceramic material glass of course is a ceramic material. You're porcelain you're all you're familiar with that. You don't have a crystalline structure in ceramics that could give a reasonable definition. That also is questionable in that

because there are some people who contend that even glass itself has a crystalline structure. There is a reason to believe that glass which is generally thought to be a non -crystalline material may and more of this material may have a cubic crystalline habit or not sure of that. So any definition that you give ceramics today someone can take exception to and valid reception. So I tried to avoid a direct answer when somebody asked me what is ceramics. When Nick turns toward the materials field as an engineer and turns to the ceramics area what specifically is he looking for? He's specifically looking for something and I'll take the words out of his mouth. Something that will stand 3 ,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Something that will not be brittle. Something that is easily machinable. Something from which he can get reproducible physical properties and none of those things can be guaranteed. And also something that will withstand loading or stress. I believe we're wouldn't you say John that where we are today one would have to turn for these purposes and not even going up to 3 ,000 degrees but

he satisfied with 2 ,000 degrees to either the so -called refractory metals ceramics or a combination of metals and ceramics normally calls for mets. I think also the most popular ceramics today are oxides of various metals and we can design and successfully build structures of these temperatures of say 2 ,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Well let's say we can build them but I still think they're other makeshift. For instance a surmet that you mentioned is a combination of metal and non -metal or ceramic fuel. A surmet in my opinion has a shortcoming of each. It has the weight of the metal. It has the thermal conductivity of the metal. It has the lactoboxidation. On the other hand the ceramic filler if you will or the ceramic component of the surmet is still brittle. It does have resistance to temperature. It will resist oxidation but still it's compromised. The surmet is a compromise and I think while this show is supposed to talk over the advances in technology in the past year.

I think that a perhaps negative result of a lot of the work that we have done that will result in a positive reward is the fact that we are finally facing the issue that we are going to have to tailor me ceramic materials for specific jobs. Adapt the laws and analogy when the chemists went to work on carbon hydrogen and oxygen. They laid the groundwork for the whole field of synthetics and we're all familiar with Teflon or nylon all of the various synthetics that have made some much difference in their lives. Now I think that the ceramic scientists, the ceramic technologists are going to have to adapt that philosophy if they can and put together the sunbatomic particles, the atomic particles, the molecules, put them together in a fashion that will overcome the shortcomings of ceramic materials. Recreate the needs of the mechanical engineer. That's essentially built from the ground up so that you have an understanding of the fundamentals that define material, behavior and properties. The hope, the great hope is naturally that you could predict this,

predetermine the compositions you want or the material you want to use for a specific purpose knowing its basic atomic characteristics. This sounds a little bit like alchemy, I suppose, reconstituting gold. And they were going to have to get our magic black wand and wavered over the hat to pull out or wrap it out in three or four years. One thing we have been talking in a sense, a little bit way out in space if you like. Certainly the problem of 3 ,000 degrees is one, is an extreme example, but we're using new materials at all. We aren't requiring new materials and new engineering principles right here and down on earth, building themselves. This is a traditional area. Before you want to consider that problem, I would like to mention that no matter what you do in space by way of new materials, the principle purpose of going out into spaces to get a man out and that is not new at all. And you can't do too much about changing the ability of a man or his own characteristics or make them so you have to find out what he can endure. And I think some very interesting results were obtained during the

year in this area. For instance, it had been determined. I am certain you read about the St. Public releases that men can endure surprisingly for an extended period of time, something on the order of 12 times gravitation as applied to his body if you position him properly. I mean he can endure for short periods with very close supports, support positioning, gravitation up to 20 times. The normal gravity on earth. He can endure 150 degrees Fahrenheit again for several minutes. And I think these are salient and must be known because it has to be determined what the conditions are that you want to design for, provided you want to have man exit and return successfully. The problem now, one of the critical ones out of return, it most certainly is you can The temperature on the one hand and the acceleration forces on the other. These same things exist when you exit, but the temperature isn't as much of a problem that it's mostly a question of acceleration. Interestingly enough,

if you were able to surround the man with a medium such that he is fully supported and this has been proven also during the year, he could withstand a very high gravitational level. As an example submerged in water, if you can maintain him there, he can withstand 40 G's of gravitation for short periods, short periods, it's a time dependent function. You want to volunteer Jules? Not this afternoon. I wonder. The problem of reentry and heat, this is one of the problems we face with that famous nose cone which we recovered. So that was brought back through ceramic, through some ceramics. Essentially that was a ceramic nose cone, at least we claim it in the ceramic field. The analysis of the reentry problem necessarily was an error because we didn't know what was out there. The nose cone, various types of nose cone, highly refractory nose cones, nose refractory. Refractory means the ability to withstand temperature or heat. Incidentally, it was only a few years ago that when someone mentioned a high temperature of 2000,

you automatically assume that he was talking in Fahrenheit. Now 100 person mentions 2000. The next question is Fahrenheit or centigrade. That leads me into a slight aside here, and I'll eventually get back to your question Jules. The whole field of high temperature is one that is not too well understood. For example, if a chemist says to me that he has something that must withstand high temperature, if I know that he's a chemist, I know that he's thinking in terms of say 900 Fahrenheit. If a, or an electronics man, he to him 900 is a high temperature. If a a seramist, if he mentions high temperature, the chances are he's thinking in terms of 5000 Fahrenheit. Well, now a missile man, he'll talk about a fuel man. We'll talk about 15 ,000 Fahrenheit, but the physicists don't even use that terminology anymore. They'll refer to a high temperature

as 7 times 10 to the 8th. They'll go on way to be honest, but all of the various fields of science all have their own ideas of what is a high temperature. So that we have to, in the first place, identify the man with the job before we know what kind of temperatures he's thinking about. Now to get back to this nose cone, the physicists had determined that the reentry problem would involve temperatures such that only the most refractory materials could possibly withstand it. Nose cones were made out of magnesium oxide, were made out of aluminum oxide, a variety of ceramic materials, and none of them was recovered. Someone conceived the idea of making a ceramic fiber reinforced plastic nose cone, and that was the one they recovered. Now the reason it was recovered was because of the ceramic reaction it went on there. When that nose cone came back into the heavy atmosphere and began to heat up, the plastic itself was carbonized, and in the ceramic field, we now clean carbon as the ceramic material. But you see your graphite on the outer

surface of this thing, the actual formation of the graphite dissipated some heat, to graphite itself has highly refractory. The ceramic fibers contributed to the structure of the nose cone, so that it did come back intact. Now this is all understood beforehand. I don't want to detract only from the value of ceramics, but I would like to say that in these class fiber reinforced plastic bodies, there is most of the heat is dissipated not by simply absorbing it, as you wouldn't heat things using perillium, but by ablation as the ablation is the terminology for it, which means that you vaporize the material at the surface and this vaporization, the latent heat of vaporization carries away most of the surface. This is what happened on the plastic surface. We still claim that it was a graphite that brought that nose cone back, but at least we did recover it. So I wonder if we could get the more general area of the material for building itself, the whole business of the new structures that are being used, new architectural principles.

This whole area of large structures without pillar supports, this is one of the critical things. I think it's fascinating field. It began quite some time ago, the idea for notion of using curved structures that would span large distances. It had been brought to a reasonable degree of development about five, six, seven years ago at the time that these large structures were first built in Italy by an architect called Nurby, as well as in America. And today, analysis of these structures and the general knowledge about them had advanced to the point where they can be built with great facility. The principle thing that you want to observe in these structures is that they should be curved, preferentially doubly curved. doubly curved means that if you have a simple arch, it would be curved in one direction. If you make this arch and extend it simply along a line, you would have a portion of a cylinder with a single curvature because in the lengthwise direction you have no curvature. Now if you think of a sphere, you have a two

degrees of curvature. One of these structures, in fact, displayed here, as you notice, the shell itself is curved in two directions. It arch is across the span and then it is also curved in the longitudinal direction. Three -ailing are very strong, lightweight, structure capable of spanning large distances without any internal supports. You say there are no internal supports in this? On the structure there are no internal supports. Is this a real structure or a marker? No, it doesn't exist. This is an existing real structure. They are used most often for such large buildings as convention halls or airplane hangers to enclose stadia for similar applications. We have some more examples of this thing. I believe this one is an airplane hanger. It is shown before the sides were actually curved. This is also doubly curved. One looks closely the same type of corrugated appearance would be shown on it. It cannot be seen from this distance. Before enclosing it, it looked like this. This is actually the strength -carrying portion of the structure after

it has been enclosed. It looks somewhat changed and you cannot readily discern the strength element in it. We have a slide showing the stool, which I think can be displayed later on. The front and the back of the structure would be closed in and it would then be used for the functional purpose intended. Apparently, we don't have a great deal of time. I wonder if we could slide. Does this create problems for us in materials? There is something that we have been able to do something about in ceramics. You see the sheer mass of a building is not necessarily an index of its stability. For instance, the monatonic building over here, the bottom of it, our six or seven feet thick, solid brick, because that was the style of, or not necessarily the style, but that was a technology of the day. On the other hand, if you go up to the new building at 1550 Lakeshore, you'll find that there appeared to be very thin columns.

The walls are simply curtain walls to keep the elements out, and that is due to the fact that we have been able to develop lightweight aggregates for concrete to take the sheer weight, the sheer mass. Lightweight aggregates, can you explain this? Sand, gravel, or Christ stone? Now, the weight of the gravel and the Christ stone do not contribute to the strength of the concrete to any great degree. If you can replace those with a lighter weight material, you will have lightweight concrete. Now, by use of lightweight concrete with reinforcing in it, it's no longer necessary to build wall six or eight feet in order to make a stable building. That's really coming back. Essentially, you save on the weight of those elements that do not carry the weight of the building, and thereby, you can cut the size of the strength carrying elements to far smaller proportions than used to be necessary. As an illustration, in olden times, they've built brick buildings in which you go into some of these historical buildings. The foundations are six to eight feet thick, in some instances. Today, we can get by, with a far lesser requirement,

we can build concrete buildings. 20, 25, 30 stories high, in fact, and as the Empire State Building shows, if you do not use concrete, but say a steel skeleton, you can go up to 100 or even 150 stories. This lightweight aggregate that you speak of, what do you get it? What's it made of? Oh, there are two types of that. One of them is the aggregate that is made from the slag from open forests. A more recent one in the Chicago area is made from shallary clay, and both have contributed greatly to Chicago's skyscrapers construction. See, originally, I had hoped, certainly, we'd cover a good deal more than we have. Unfortunately, we're currently right running out of time. So, I'd like to thank you both very much for your conversation, and perhaps we can go on with this on some other program. I'd like to thank you again, then. Dr. Nicholas A. Wheele, who was the Director of the Mechanical Engineering Research Division at Armour. Mr. John Neff, who was the Director of the Ceramics Research Division at Armour. The Illinois Institute of Technology. Good morning. This is Jules Anger for the American

Scene. Good morning.