You are in front of a wing section. It's mass is less than your coffee table yet could prop up a small building.
Magic? No, that's not correct.
This is integrated engineering---where chemistry meets physics, where materials science melds with structural mechanics, where disciplines that scarcely uttered a word to each other two decades ago now speak in unison. The era of specialists working in isolation is over. What has replaced it is a new way of thinking about flying machines.
The Death of the Silo
Recall when materials engineers created materials, and structural engineers developed ways to use them? That division now seems almost charming, like employing a typewriter to design rocket ships. These days, composite structural engineering obliterates such old boundaries.
Observe a design team at work today. You will discover chemists modifying resin formulations due to stress analysis feedback. Structural engineers will suggest how to orient fibers to maximize their potential. Manufacturing specialists, however, will refine their ideas to meet production realities. Meanwhile, with the aid of tools like the internet, some software developers will work with ingenious methods of self-simulation. All of these professionals will be arguing constantly.
The transition took time; it didn't take place all at once.
It began with failure. More specifically, with composites that excelled in laboratory settings but underwhelmed in real-world applications. Ideal materials confronting an imperfect reality. The distance between how the composites were supposed to work and how they actually performed was growing painfully large. Something had to give. It couldn't be the materials, so it had to be the method.
When Disciplines Collide
Consider this: you are in charge of making a new structure to be used at high temperatures. This structure still has to be a composite material, which means it must be made of at least two different materials.
The old way of doing this had teams of materials scientists working for years creating options. Then these options were tested---for high-temperature strength, among other things---and iterations were made until a final choice was selected and made in quantity.
Now? A completely different tale. Next to your thermal analyst sits your polymer chemist. They're watching real-time data from testing prototypes. Patterns of degradation are seen by the chemist, who right away recalibrates concepts of polymer architecture. The thermal analyst is faster still with suggestions for testing protocols that will reveal vulnerabilities in our assumptions. Biasing our prototypes toward failure is part of their job, yet manufacturing engineers have every right to interrupt. Those molecular changes the chemist is making affect processability, and we all need our prototypes to be in working condition.
This dialogue occurs in seconds, not in long, drawn-out stretches of time.
The aerospace industry uncovered a major truth: composite performance isn't solely a function of material properties. It's the union of chemistry, physics, and design, plus good manufacturing practices, that gets you to the next level. Drop any of these elements, and you're headed for costly disappointment. Once you integrate them all, though? You unleash the go-beyond capabilities that really make redefining the possible look easy.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Traditional Engineering
What nobody states openly is this: aerospace engineering became lazy, not by choice, but because success fostered a kind of complacency. Predictability was the watchword for metal alloys. For decades, design rules had been allowed to mature. And for the most part, engineers could trust that their colleagues would satisfactorily handle the domains they worked in.
Composites destroyed that comfort.
These materials do not obey metals' laws. They are anisotropic (properties vary with direction); they are process-sensitive (the methods used affect the final material); they are design-dependent (the arrangement of the structures, as much as their composition, determines their behavior); they are unfathomable; they are capricious; they are composites.
You cannot do composite engineering through distance communication. You must know the material. You must understand it. You must respect it. You must integrate it.
Intelligent organizations saw this first. They ceased to engage composite engineers. In their stead, they raised composite teams---groups where the blur of disciplines serves a necessary function. Where asking outside-your-expertise "stupid questions" is, by and large, a value proposition. Where not knowing opens avenues to innovation.
What Really Happens in Modern Development
Disregard the organizational charts. Today's composite development isn't so much classical as it is jazz, with progress driven by improvisation yet still conforming to a kind of structure.
You have a need. For instance, you require a component that is lighter, stronger, and more temperature-resistant than today's alternatives. Your traditional development model: a sequential approach. Your modern development model: parallel exploration with constant communication.
The materials team looks at resin systems. The structural analysts look at models. But they work together, or at least they should, if the place is to function like a real-world company. They should be sharing their findings together at the daily or sometimes hourly meetings. Here is what works; here is what doesn't work. Here is something that looks super promising but also shows unexpected brittleness at certain temperatures. All of this knowledge should be shared.
Disciplinary ideas bounce around like pinballs. What starts as a problem in materials turns into a solution in structure. A constraint in manufacturing inspires design innovations that change the way we see the world. A requirement of design pushes the boundaries of material science.
These ball-and-chain companion disciplines might sound like the kind you'd be warned against in a productivity seminar. They are chaotic, they are multidisciplinary, and they are definitely not in your lane.
The Revolution Nobody Noticed
While everyone watched something else, aerospace shifted. The electric aircraft made the headlines, as did the push for autonomous flight. But at the same time, under most people's radar, composite engineering started to take over how we think about materials and structures in aerospace. Not through any particular big discovery---mostly through integration.
Think about contemporary wing design. Nowadays, it's not merely a selection of substances and materials. It's a harmony of fiber directions, resin attributes, ways of making the thing, and structural decisions.
Each element affects the others---if you, say, change the angle of the fiber in one spot, the stress distribution all over shifts, and if the chemistry of the resin is changed, then the way you make it has to be different.
The toolset has changed, too. Not only structural behavior, but also the effects of manufacturing, thermal responses, and damage progression are modeled using simulation software. This allows predictions about how microscopic cracks in resin will affect the integrity of a structure on a macroscopic scale. Also, before any physical prototypes exist, virtual testing now shows what kinds of failure will happen under what kinds of stress.
But, still: tools don't drive innovation. Integrated thinking does.
Why Generalists Matter Again
We spent decades creating specialists. And unquestionably, you still need those people in every field. But engineers who are composites---that is, engineers who speak multiple technical languages and recognize the connections that others miss---are also essential.
Translations made by these engineers from the languages of the narrow specialists to the languages of the narrow specialists they work with (and vice versa) account for much of the value added by composites. More languages may equal more value. But less can also equal more. In fact, these "languages" may not need to be formally codified to deliver value---they work because they bridge between specialized minds.
Observe high-functioning composite teams in action, and you will realize that the most valuable members are not always the deepest subject-matter experts. Instead, they are the connectors---the ones who understand enough physics to reason with the polymer physicists, enough mechanics to engage in meaningful discourse with structural analysts, and enough manufacturing to respect the constraints imposed by production.
They translate between disciplines, spot integration opportunities, and ask the insightful questions that lead to breakthrough discussions.
This change makes old-line engineers edgy. For years, they felt secure in their specialized areas of expertise, content to do the work that was explicitly their domain. But now, they are being told that their knowledge may not be as valuable as they thought it was, at least in the form it used to come in.
But the secret that old-line engineers need to hear is this: expertise still counts for something. It's just that now, with the enormity of problems we face, it's not enough to be an expert in a single area of specialization. To solve really hard problems, we need composite engineers.
The Future Hiding in Plain Sight
Are you curious about the direction aerospace is taking? Then observe the teams working in composite engineering. They are at the leading edge of an exciting wave of innovation that is sure to sweep across the entire industry. And the good news is, they're not taking a materials-only approach to problem-solving. They're taking a methods approach.
That means they're doing a few things that are really interesting. They're not working in traditional silos, where separate disciplines mind their own business. They're working in an integrated way with other disciplines to tackle complex, multidisciplinary problems, which is the recognition that complex problems demand complex, multifaceted solutions.
Other teams press on, embedding sensors in composite materials and end-item products during manufacturing. They're creating oversampled items that tell you what's really going on with them and give you the situation awareness required to make smart decisions about them and the system you're in.
Big deal, right? Well, hold that thought.
This transition is problematic for traditional aerospace companies. Their org structures resist integration. Their budget structures assume departmental boundaries. Their career structures reward specialization.
But for composite engineering, none of that matters. It demands integration or produces mediocrity, with no paths between those two outcomes.
What This Means for You
Be you an engineer, manager, or merely interested in the coming days of aerospace, composite engineering has lessons to teach. The days when one expert in a domain could stand alone and solve a problem are ending. Not just in aerospace---this is a trend everywhere complex problems exist. Whether it's climate change, sustainable energy, or urban design, all these require integrated, interdisciplinary solutions.
You don't need to fashion yourself into a composite engineer. But comprehending how they think and work? That's worth its weight in gold. Observe how they do an end run around disciplinary boundaries. Note how they carry integrated knowledge as easily as they carry specialized knowledge. And see how a mind that thinks in patterns of sí, no, and sí embraces the complexity of their work without trying to reduce it to something simple.
The next time you take to the air, remember this: the composite structures that keep you up are not the handiwork of materials scientists, structural engineers, or manufacturing specialists alone. They are the products of all of those people---and many more---working together, arguing in ways that are sometimes quite unproductive but mostly productive, and integrating all sorts of things.
That's the revolution.
It's not only aerospace that is being reshaped by composite engineering. It's also showing how intricate issues get resolved when different fields stop guarding their territory and begin exchanging intelligence. The future is in the hands of integrators. Aerospace simply worked this out first.
At Mentis Sciences, we understand that a revolution in innovation happens at the intersection of disciplines. We support a multidisciplinary approach that can take you from concept all the way to prototypes. Whether you're in a lab developing advanced materials that will solve defense problems or creating integrated STEM education programs, we want to help you in a big way.
Explore all the ways we're doing that at www.mentissciences.com.
