We were shipped over to the third member of the GEA schools this morning to study in their laboratories. GEA is comprised of three member schools: ISAE (where I'm living), ENAC (where I've done most of my studies), and ENSICA (where we went today). This was by far my favorite day of classes so far.
We studied the effect of a static load on the landing gear for one of the military aircraft produced by Airbus. Between all of the engineers in my group we remembered quite a bit about strain gauges in a Wheatstone bridge, Hooke's law, and material properties which was cool. In the afternoon, our group went over to the composites lab and learned about the materials airplanes are made of. It was really interesting since I've never taken a materials class. At the end, we layered sheets of carbon fiber prepreg together to study the effect of fiber direction on the ability of the material to support loads in different directions. We only did 8 layers, but airplanes have 120 layers for their fuselages. We made a vacuum bag and left the carbon fiber with the materials guy so he could bake it overnight and show us the results. Rode the metro back and then watched the first half of France and Mexico in the downstairs foyer. I was pretty tired so I went to bed and missed all of the action in the second half. My buddy who roots for Mexico had a fun night after their victory.
Friday June 18
Bus driver got lost on the way to class this morning, 20 minute ride took an hour longer than it was supposed to, but it gave me time to update my blog entries so I didn't mind too much. We analyzed the stresses in the different elements of a wing structure under a bending moment. The carbon fiber plates turned out really awesome, definitely an interesting lab. Afternoon classes were cancelled which was extremely convenient because the USA Slovenia game started at 4pm. We went into town to watch it at a bar and had a good time. The crappy call by the ref was ridiculous, totally cost us an amazing come from behind win. I was satisfied with the tie though since we were down by so much to start off with. England Algeria was really boring, US needs to win their next game to advance out of group play.
Saturday June 19
It rained pretty much all day, stayed inside doing laundry, listening to music and grabbing movies and TV shows from other students in the program. Not a bad day, but uneventful.
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