Developing Airplanes by Developing
3D Scanning
Contents
26 DMIS Corner
Stephen Horsfall
33 PC-DMIS With James Mannes
James Mannes
9 Werth Inc.
10 GKS
10 Mark Boucher Consulting
31 DMSC
Advertisers
Regular Columns
3 Developing Airplanes by De-
veloping 3D Scanning
Direct Dimensions
7 Unique challenges to meas-
uring microparts
By Patrick Lanthier, F25 Product Manager, Carl
Zeiss IMT Corporation
9 Reviews on CMM software
(Part One)
Ray Xing
11 Supercharger: Redesigning Aftermarket Part from Cast-
ing
GKS
12 True Position With Zeiss Calypso Part 1
Nathan Corliss
20 GRANITE…it’s Used On The Best Cmms But How Difficult
Is It To Get?
Al Hall
34 Upcoming Training
The QC Group
3-dimensional scanning and reverse engineering com-
panies are constantly challenged by their customers in
various industries to develop new solutions to complex
problems. One industry that certainly pushes the limits
of those capabilities is the design and manufacture of
aerostructures. In November 2006, for example, engi-
neers at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in the
Mojave Desert at Edwards, CA were conducting re-
search aimed at lessening the loudness of supersonic
flight. The LANCETS research (Light And Nozzle
Change Effect on Tail Shock) measures the benefits of
redistributing aircraft lift and changing engine nozzle
pressure ratios to reduce shock-wave pressure, thereby
lessening the sonic boom.
Future supersonic commercial aircraft, before allowed
to fly overland, must be quiet. Advanced computation-
al fluid dynamics (CFD) software is used in the design
of these new aircraft, but the ability of these software
packages to accurately predict reduced sonic boom
loudness has not yet been verified except for very lim-
ited cases. NASA’s unique NF-15B aircraft, equipped
with canards (smaller airfoils in front of the main wing)
and adjustable engine nozzles, is ideally suited to test
the capabilities of CFD over a wide variety of configu-
rations. In 2008 and 2009, the NF-15B wa