Ever wondered how a 290-tonne behemoth can fly? And at the same time carry up to 555 passengers? Not only that but with an engine more efficient than your car? It’s Airbus’ A380, a twin-deck, four-aisle airliner but most importantly, aeronautical engineering is the branch of engineering that made it possible.

Aeronautical engineering is the study of the mathematics and mechanics of flying objects, in particular aeroplanes. It is a field that is highly mathematical and very dependent on the mathematical branch of calculus, with unique methods used like the Finite Elements (FE) method and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to name a few. The main elements of aeronautical engineering are: 

• Aerodynamics - the study of fluid flow around objects such as wings and in actual fact can be applied to a wide range of fields like calculating forces and moments on aircraft, the mass flow of petroleum through pipelines, and prediction of weather patterns.
• Propulsion - the study of methods to move a vehicle through the air provided by internal combustion engines, jet engines and rockets.
• Flight Dynamics/Controls - the study of maneuvering vehicles to achieve the desired position and attitude, in fact combat aircraft is designed to be highly unstable so as to be highly maneuverable with the aid of state-of-the-art fly-by-wire systems.
• Aircraft Structures - design of the physical configuration of the craft to withstand the forces encountered during flight and also at the same time required to be relatively lightweight.
• Aeroelasticity - the interaction of aerodynamic forces and structural flexibility, potentially causing flutter, divergence, etc.

Aeronautical engineers tend to work on projects like performing wind tunnel tests on an aircraft model, designing and analyzing the structure of an airplane wing, taking data from a flight test to study how a new component works or how it can be improved, building and testing engines or rocket motors for a new airplane or missile, using computers to predict the aerodynamic behavior of a new aircraft design, designing flight control systems to make airplanes easier and safer to fly, predicting the performance characteristics (such as maximum range and maneuverability) of aircraft and missiles, or creating flight simulators for training pilots or modeling the flight characteristics of various aircraft.

However skills learnt in aeronautical engineering are not only limited to just aircraft but are highly transferable to other fields. For example in the automotive industry, where the aerodynamics of vehicles are being optimized to increase operating efficiencies of cars and also in the structures department, where structures are optimized to be both strong and weight-efficient with the use of composite materials and metals like titanium and aluminium alloys.

All in all, the future looks bright in Asia for the aeronautical industry with the outsourcing trend from the West to the East that is so apparent now as companies seek to lower costs, the emergence of budget airlines in Southeast Asia which has struck the right note with the region’s burgeoning middle-class and with China’s frightening rate of development where industry experts are anticipating 2,400 new aircraft orders over the next 20 years.

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