M. Jonathan Turner

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M. Jonathan Turner (born March 13, 1915 in Oakville , Indiana , † October 13, 1995 in Bellevue , Washington ) was an American aircraft engineer.

Life

Turner acquired in June 1936 at Ball State Teachers College in Muncie ( Indiana ) Bachelor in mathematics and physics; a year later the University of Chicago awarded him a Master of Science degree in mathematics. Thereafter, Turner worked as a math teacher from 1937 to 1938 at the University of Tennessee and from 1938 to 1940 at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee .

Turners industry practice as an aircraft engineer began in 1941 with joining the aircraft manufacturer Chance Vought in Bridgeport ( Connecticut ) before 1949 to Boeing in Seattle changed. There Turner developed an extraordinarily successful professional activity, which culminated in 1956 in the essay on strength theory of solids published together with Clough , Martin and Topp , which is considered the birth certificate of the finite element method (FEM). In the same year Turner was promoted to head of the Structural Dynamics Unit and in 1958 was promoted to head of the Structural Research and Development department. Shortly afterwards he succeeded in a second stroke of genius with his direct stiffness method and thus prepared the ground for the hegemony of the deformation method in finite element analysis. Turner opened the door to the development of Computational Mechanics (computer-aided numerical mechanics ).

In 1968 Turner took over responsibility for Structural Dynamics in the Supersonic Transport (SST) division, moved to structural research in the Commercial Aircraft Division in 1972 and retired in 1983. Since the mid-1960s, Turner dealt with the optimization of aircraft structures and then with the structural analysis of supersonic aircraft. During his professional career at Boeing, Turner managed not only to attract talented engineers such as Bruce Greene, Bob Melosh Dick Merritt, Bob Jones Dick McLay, JA Seiler, Don Strome, LJ Topp and RC Weikel, but also scientists such as Harold Martin, Ellis Dill and Ray William Clough to encourage joint research projects. These names stand for groundbreaking achievements in the field of FEM, which make up the logical core of the innovation phase in structural mechanics (1950–1975). For his great contribution to the technical and scientific development of aircraft construction, Turner was honored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) with the Technical Excellence Award in Structures, Structural Dynamics and Materials in 1972.

Fonts

  • Turner, MJ, 1949. Aerodynamic theory of oscillating sweptback wings. Journal of Mathematics and Physics, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 280-293.
  • Turner, MJ, Clough, RW, Martin, HC, Topp, LJ, 1956. Stiffness and deflection analysis of complex structures. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, Vol. 23, No. 9, pp. 805-823, p. 854
  • Turner, MJ, 1959. The direct stiffness method of structural analysis. Structural & Materials Panel Paper, AGARD Meeting, Aachen.
  • Turner, MJ, Dill, EH, Martin, HC, Melosh, RJ, 1960. Large deflection analysis of complex structures subjected to heating and external loads. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 97-106 & 127.
  • Turner, MJ, Martin, HC, Weikel, RC, 1962/1964. Further development and applications of the stiffness method AGARD structures and materials panel, Paris, Jul 1962. In: AGARDograph 72: Matrix Methods of Structural Analysis, ed. By BM Fraeijs de Veubeke, pp. 203-266. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Turner, MJ, 1967. Design of minimum mass structures with specified natural frequencies. AIAA Journal, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 406-412.
  • Turner, MJ, 1969. Optimization of structures to satisfy flutter requirements. AIAA Journal, Vol. 7, No. 5, pp. 945-951.
  • Turner, MJ, Grande, DL, 1977. Study of metallic structural design concepts for an arrow wing supersonic cruise configuration. NASA CR-2743. * Final report prepared for NASA Langley Research Center under contract NAS1-12287.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Jump up ↑ Turner, MJ, Clough, RW, Martin, HC, Topp, LJ, 1956. Stiffness and deflection analysis of complex structures. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, Vol. 23, No. 9, pp. 805-823, p. 854
  2. ↑ Karl-Eugen Kurrer: The classical publication of a non-classical method . In: The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium. Second, considerably enlarged Edition. Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 , pp. 881-884
  3. ^ Turner, MJ, 1959. The direct stiffness method of structural analysis. Structural & Materials Panel Paper, AGARD Meeting, Aachen
  4. ^ Karl-Eugen Kurrer: The heuristic potential of FEM: the direct stiffness method . In: The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium . Second, considerably enlarged Edition. Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 , pp. 884-887
personal data
SURNAME Turner, M. Jonathan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American engineer
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Oakville , ( Indiana )
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1995
Place of death Bellevue