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space manufacturing. About the size of
a travel mug, the FLOC has a resolution
of 0.1 mPa, 36 times better than NIST’s
official U.S. pressure standard, which is
a 3-m-tall column of liquid mercury that
extends through the ceiling of the cali-
bration room. The FLOC is also 100 times
faster than the standard mercury ma-
nometer.
Airbusdonates
aircraft part
toUCLAmaterials lab
Mechanical and aerospace engi-
neering students at University of Cali-
fornia, Los Angeles (UCLA), will have a
rare opportunity to analyze the com-
position, structure, thermal, and other
properties of a piece of advanced com-
mercial aircraft equipment, thanks to
a donation from Airbus Americas. The
part, a 28-ft-long elevator from an Air-
bus A330, was delivered to the UCLA
Henry Samueli School of Engineering
and Applied Science late last year. The
elevator, used for flight control on the
aircraft’s tail, is valued at $750,000. The
equipment will be housed at UCLA’s
Materials Degradation Characterization
Laboratory, supervised by Ajit Mal, dis-
tinguished professor of mechanical and
aerospace engineering.
“This material and this structure
are very advanced,” says Mal. “It is so
important to have a real piece of aircraft
in the lab so students can have access to
new and advanced materials and struc-
tures.” Mal’s long-term research goal is to
develop sensors that can be embedded
in composite materials to communicate
when a vital component of a structure is
damaged by impact with a foreign ob-
ject. .
UCLA engineering students will study the advancedmaterials inside this 28-ft-long Airbus
A330 part.
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