Society of Allied Weight Engineers

The day started with an open forum on weight control. The forum was very interactive with a lot of great points across the industries. Conversation included how we, mass property engineers, see things differently and we need speak up on mass properties, how smaller companies or subcontractors may need the support to ensure they are going in the right direction, remembering that smaller companies likely don’t have a mass properties engineer, incentives vs. penalties, cost of a pound or the value of a pound, and tying weight to performance. Lot of other great points and conversations occurred. These forums are great for everyone to see all the different point of views across the industries and across companies big and small.

Dan Otlowski of Space Electronics started off Aerospace Session 1 with a presentation on measuring weight and CG of manned spacecraft. Damian Yanez presented to the group the Welcome to SAWE presentation he has worked on. The presentation goes into detail the benefits to SAWE for both new members and potential corporate sponsors. This is open for members to use and chapters — great way to try and reel in new members! Amanda Cutright, NASA Langley Research Center, finished out the morning with a presentation on the Ascent Abort 2 for the Orion spacecraft. We do not want have crew members launched without the ability to abort. AA-2 is the next flight test in the exploration systems development program.

The afternoon Aerospace Session started with Dudley Cate, NAVAIR (retired) provided a presentation on weight and design data for WWII era aircraft. I am personally looking forward to being able to read this paper! Larry DiSano, Ensinger, finished the session with a presentation on Thermoplastic Composites for small parts.

We can’t say it enough, thank you to all our vendors who presented throughout the week!

Last night a large group of us went on a dinner cruise on the Spirit of Norfolk. It was a perfect night for this, the weather was great and as you can see by the sunset, it was a beautiful night. If you have the opportunity to attend these type of events during conferences, I highly recommend it. It is always a good night!

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Today is Standards & Practices Day. Each of the following industries is holding meetings: Airline Affairs, Ground Vehicles, Marine Industry, Military Aircraft, Missiles and Space, and Offshore Industry.

The day started with an overview from Andy Schuster. Just a reminder of the comment tracking for S&P public review on the SAWE website. Documents are often posted for the public review from members of the society. Even if a document is not posted for a review, you can document a comment and when the document is under its 5 year review the comment will already be documented. The site to do this is http://sawe.org/rp

Incoming VP S&P, Doug Fisher, discussed his goals for his term and how he hopes we can and will be successful.

We started off the conference with opening speaker, Dawn Schaible, Director of Engineering at NASA Langley Research Center. She provided insight to NASA Langley’s past, present, and future. She overviewed NASA’s planned return America to the moon in 2024. This will include America’s first woman to step foot on the moon.

Anne Weiss and Rosemary Smith followed up with a rousing and eye opening presentation on how learning is changing for children. We need to reimagine learning and we need to inspire the future STEM students

The Statistics Session 1 had great presentations by Doug Fisher, Manuela Bucci, and David Hansch. Manuela was presented with honorary mention for her paper with Colin MacFarlane.

Bill Boze, John Hargrave, and Yi-Ling Tam presented after lunch on the Mass Properties Certification SAWE is working towards. They reviewed the benefits for SAWE and its members, market survey results that have helped build their roadmap, and a notional model. If you want to be involved in the certification process, please contact Yi-Ling

Anjie Emmett started off the afternoon statistics session. Having worked on the abort system for the Orion space crew module, she discussed applying the law of propagation of uncertainties. Robert Hundl followed with an overview of evaluating Center of Gravity Envelope using a probabilistic approach. He went over Monte Carlo Simulations in Excel and how we can use these for sensitivity studies as well as providing us with a sense of risk.

I ended the day with Nick Marickovich’s presentation on his journey on the Appalachian Trail and how backpack weight effected this. Great presentation!

I would love to hear how the other sessions went and your thoughts on the day and the presentations!

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There are some prime opportunities to see the International Space Station go overhead during the upcoming conference. Saturday morning and night, it will reach a max height of a whopping 80+ degrees overhead. Check out the link below for your opportunities.

https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings/view.cfm?country=United_States&region=Virginia&city=Norfolk#.XN21JJWWy9E

We have changed the format of SnP Day on Tuesday of the SAWE Conference in Norfolk VA.  We will only have a 30 minute opening an no recap session at the end of the day.  This will give each industry committee more time for discussions and some other exciting activities. The industry committee meetings will be from 8:30 to 5:00PM with the traditional coffee breaks and SnP Luncheon from 12:00 to 1:30 PM.

I am pleased to announce the following additional activities:

RP C- 9 Data Exchange – ISO-10303-242 Meeting from 3:30-5:00 in room 1783

Sebastian-Verian Herda will lead a meeting to define the scope of their project titled Mass Properties Digital Data Attributes for PLM data exchange & Reporting,  The purpose of the meeting is to review and to agree on a Project Proposal.   As I understand it (Andy Schuster VP-SnP), the purpose of the project  is create cconsistent PLM data and exchange protocols will simplify MPD functionality set up in PLM & ERP systems. The STEP AP 242 file (ISO 10303-242) is a system independent file format and is the best established specification within the Automotive, Aerospace, and Defence industries. It specifies the application protocol for Model based 3D engineering.  The STEP effort will be added to the other data exchange methods used by SAWE members such as MPEX, and RP M-1 to create a Cross Industry Function Recommended Practice.  The meeting will clarify my interpretation.

Mass Properties Engineer Certification Discussions

Each Industry Committee has set aside an hour of the day to discuss the impact of this program to their industry.  The program will be presented in a 90 minute presentation on Monday afternoon during the technical session.  The program leaders Yi-ling Tam, John Hargrave, Bill Boze and Clint Stephenson, will visit each meeting to get feedback based on a set of open ended questions to draw out your opinions.  From discussions at the SnP Standards Review Board meeting, we know that the impact of the Mass Properties Engineer Certification program will be dramatically different between industries, and we want to know how dramatic.  For example the Marine and Military Aircraft industries may want everything in English, while the Offshore industry may want the training materials and exams in English, Portuguese and Korean so that the detailed design and construction workers can do things in their native language.  The committee would like your thoughts on the program.

Weight Engineers Handbook – Update Discussions

Damian Yanez, and Andy Schuster will visit each Industry Committee for a 30 minute discussion of what should be updated in the new revision of the handbook.  For example :

• We know that some sections are so out of date (i.e. Crew Systems and Power Systems from the 1960’s Mercury program), and need to be updated.  The existing sections will not help us  to get to the moon in 2024 or mars in 2035. 
• We will also  ask each IC to commit to reviewing sections in the handbook that apply to their industry, by the end of the summer.  All we want to know whether the 2011 edition has the right information..  For example we’ll ask the marine Industry Committee to review the Marine section of the Handbook for errors omissions, etc.
• Finally, we will get commitments from those Industry Committees such as the offshore, for their schedule to provide a new section to the handbook.

The Gulfstream team of MPE’s is about a third of the way through converting the old handbook into MS Word.  This is a significant accomplishment!!!  We owe it to them to assure the data they convert or include is up to  date and accurate. 

Andy Schuster

SAWE has been blessed with a great supply of technical content for our May conference in Norfolk VA. Earlier the technical committee had started to refuse submissions due to a lack of presentation slots. It is now planned to open up an additional technical track, and so be able to include all of the initially proposed as well as some later incoming papers. We hope this is another great reason for you to attend our conference. Attendee’s receive electronic copies of our technical content as well.  So get registered, and get your accommodations. Remember, registrations conducted after May 3rd incur a $50 late charge, and training course registrations are to be completed no later than April 19th.

ANSI-SAWE STD M-4 is in the committee draft review stage and has been posted on the Standards Public Review page. Any comments should be submitted by 5/1/2019.

RP A-7 is in the committee draft review stage and has been posted on the Standards Public Review page. Any comments should be submitted by 5/1/2019.  

RP O-3 is in the public draft review stage and has been posted on the Standards Public Review page. This document is available for anyone to review (general public or SAWE member). Any comments should be submitted by 4/26/2019.

http://sawe.org/technical/rp/publicreview