During WW2, aircraft engine manufacturers would have a row of engines on test stands running at full power continuously until they broke. Then the engineers would examine the part that broke, and redesign it. Then continue the test.
This resulted in vastly improved engine reliability.
Also, the analysis of failure modes in http://www.sportaviationonline.org/sportaviation/201001#pg94 is interesting. It turns out that most things do not work behave like the "If you chart failures over time, you will almost always see some form of bell-shaped curve" alluded to in the article. In particular, a discouragingly large fraction fail shortly after being put into service.
First I thought the Waddington Effect would just be the usual inverse causality (broken planes require more maintenance, ergo planes receiving more maintenance are more likely to turn out to be the ones that break a lot). Turns out it's something different entirely. Interesting read.
Newly designed automobile engines are still tested in the same way.
While computer analysis has replaced a lot of the "run, break, repeat" iteration, new engine designs will generally spend thousands of hours on the engine dyno before and concurrently with integration (road) testing before they're shipped in a model. While computer simulation has gotten pretty good, there's no substitute for the final product, especially when it comes to tuning engine control maps to pass emissions and develop power efficiently and safely.
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During WW2, aircraft engine manufacturers would have a row of engines on test stands running at full power continuously until they broke. Then the engineers would examine the part that broke, and redesign it. Then continue the test.
This resulted in vastly improved engine reliability.
There are other interesting studies from WW2. "The Waddington Effect" describes the fact that the less maintenance was done on the airplanes, the less they broke: http://blog.aopa.org/opinionleaders/2014/01/14/the-waddingto...
Also, the analysis of failure modes in http://www.sportaviationonline.org/sportaviation/201001#pg94 is interesting. It turns out that most things do not work behave like the "If you chart failures over time, you will almost always see some form of bell-shaped curve" alluded to in the article. In particular, a discouragingly large fraction fail shortly after being put into service.
First I thought the Waddington Effect would just be the usual inverse causality (broken planes require more maintenance, ergo planes receiving more maintenance are more likely to turn out to be the ones that break a lot). Turns out it's something different entirely. Interesting read.
The Waddington Effect makes perfect sense. I know from making my own auto repairs that the first few hours after the repair are the riskiest :-)
This is one reason why Boeing has made huge efforts to reduce the required maintenance on airplanes.
Newly designed automobile engines are still tested in the same way.
While computer analysis has replaced a lot of the "run, break, repeat" iteration, new engine designs will generally spend thousands of hours on the engine dyno before and concurrently with integration (road) testing before they're shipped in a model. While computer simulation has gotten pretty good, there's no substitute for the final product, especially when it comes to tuning engine control maps to pass emissions and develop power efficiently and safely.