 |
They called him “Mr. Honeycomb”
 |
Andrew
“Mr. Honeycomb” Marshall (center) worked on the
Voyager craft that flew around the world in nine days in December
1986, piloted by Dick Rutan (left) and Jeana Yeager (right).
He marvels that aviation has evolved so briskly in 100 short
years. “It’s been an amazing industry,”
he says.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ANDREW MARSHALL |
Andy Marshall (B.S. ’43 ME) still gets excited about honeycomb
sandwich, a type of composite construction he helped popularize
after World War II that made the building of large weight-critical
aircraft more practical and paved the way for a revolution in
the aviation industry.
“Now sandwich is everywhere,” he says, noting that
a low-tech version is used in public bathroom stall partitions.
“But in the early years, all the customers were involved
in aircraft.”
Sandwich construction consists of two thin facings rigidly attached
to any light and inexpensive core. The first honeycomb core, Chinese
paper decorations dating back 2,000 years, was probably inspired
by the hexagonally shaped nest chambers wasps have been building
for more than 25 million years.
A pilot from the age of 14, Marshall was drawn to honeycomb through
his flying. Following service in the U.S. Navy during the war,
he worked from 1950 to 1978 for Hexcel Corporation. Started from
a basement laboratory by his college roommates, Roger Steele (B.S.
’43 ME) and Roscoe Hughes (B.S. ’43 ME), Hexcel today
does $1 billion in business worldwide and remains the industry
leader. Marshall was Hexcel’s western regional manager,
with a region so large—everything west of the Mississippi—that
he had to buy his own plane to effectively do the job.
“Nominally I was a salesman,” Marshall says, “but
actually I was an engineering missionary, teaching people who
were already good engineers why honeycomb was a logical answer
to the problems faced in designing airframes. You really couldn’t
sell this stuff unless you taught people how to apply it where
it made sense.”
He did so much to facilitate the use of honeycomb sandwich that
he was known at Hexcel as “Sandwich Engineer” and
industrywide as “Mr. Honeycomb.” He refined manufacturing
processes, championed potential applications, and solved problems
like identifying effective adhesives that could resist damage
from moisture and bacteria. First used in radomes (radar equipment
housing domes) and wings, then in airframe parts, honeycomb was
eventually incorporated throughout entire planes.
“Major loads are confined to a small part of the structure,”
Marshall explains, “so all those square feet aft of the
spar [the main frame for a plane’s wings] that don’t
do much are candidates for honeycomb.”
Marshall was a member of the Engineering Alumni Society for many
years and served as its president in 1971–72. He left Hexcel
in 1978 to form his own consulting firm, serving major airframe
manufacturers including Boeing, Bell, Lockheed, Douglas, and Martin.
He recently wrote an entertaining history of honeycomb for SAMPE,
the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering.
The “tribute” book, which includes a brief biography
of Marshall, is available at www.sampe.org/publicat.html.
|
|
FOREFRONT takes you into the
labs, classrooms, and lives of professors, students, and alumni
for an intimate look at the innovative research, teaching, and
campus life that define the College of Engineering at the University
of California, Berkeley.
Published three times a year by the Engineering Public Affairs
Office. Have a comment about Forefront? E-mail
your letter to the editor. Click here
to learn more about the magazine. |
|
