In the design of the vital interstages of the Saturn V rocket which launched America’s Skylab space station into earth orbit, NASA used methods based on the theory and experimental work of Prof. Joseph Singer, of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. With research contracts from the U.S. Air Force, Prof. Singer and his associates have, for 13 years, conducted research into the buckling strength of cylindrical and conical shells, which form the outer skins of aircraft and missiles like Saturn.
In the mid 1960’s they evolved a method for analyzing such structures from the standpoint of the buckling strength of their outer skins, which are reinforced with external stiffening ribs called stringers. NASA then adopted Prof. Singer’s analytical method in designing the intermediate stages which link the first and second and second and third, stages of Saturn which launched the Apollo vehicles on their way to the moon, and now the Skylab. Stringers provide bracing for the thin-walled missile body to prevent it from buckling under the forces of acceleration when the rocket’s engines lift the heavy multi-stage assembly.
Prof. Singer, who is Tark Professor of Aircraft Structures, is one of Israel’s foremost aeronautical pioneers and present-day leaders. On loan from Technion, he currently serves as Senior Vice President for Engineering at Israel Aircraft Industries, the country’s largest single employer and the manufacturer of the Arava and Commodore jet aircraft and the Gabriel missile.
Born in Austria. Prof. Singer immigrated to Israel in 1938, served in the British Royal Air Force in World War II and then studied Aeronautical Engineering at Imperial College of London, graduating in 1948. Upon completion of a master’s degree at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1949, he returned to Israel to join the engineering department of the fledgling Israel Air Force and. attaining the rank of Major, became the head of the Test and Development Section.
Prof. Singer has served as Dean of the Faculty and has been a visiting professor of Aeronautics at Stanford University and California Institute of Technology. He is Past President of the Israel Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
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