For Engineers Week 2022 we wanted to show #WhatEngineersDo by chatting with some real engineers with Martin County ties. Today we hear from Richard Check, an aerospace engineer with Boeing.
Q: What do you do at your job?
I’m an engineering manager for The Boeing Company in Everett, Washington. My group is in the Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) business unit and is titled “Composite Structural Methods and Allowables”. We’re part of a central Structures support organization, and provide structural analysis methods (both closed form equations and finite element based methods) and composite strength design values to all BCA airplane programs (737, 747, 767, 777, 787 and future Product Development).
Engineers on the airplane programs use the structural analysis methods and strength values that we provide to calculate the predicted strength of detailed composite parts going on our airplanes. My team drives a lot of small-scale material strength testing that’s used to develop the composite material strength values and to validate the analytical methods for predicting part strength (i.e. we ask our test labs to break things for us). Our primary composite material systems consist of various epoxy resins reinforced with various forms of carbon fiber and fiberglass. We have both solid laminate and honeycomb type structure on our airplanes.
As the manager of this team, my primary responsibilities are to set overall priorities, ensure that we have appropriate budget and staff, help with technical decisions, review and approve all technical guidance developed by our team, and provide the engineers on our team with career development and growth opportunities. Earlier in my career I was an engineer on the original 777 program as a structural stress analyst calculating strength of detailed parts during the design phase of the program. I was also part of the “Internal Loads” team that calculates internal forces going through the structure of the airplane.
Q: What’s the best part of your job?
Knowing that we contribute to the creation of commercial airplanes that change the world is pretty special. By far the best part of my job is getting to work with a world class team of engineers. I especially enjoy the one-on-one interactions that I get to have with such an outstanding team.
Q: Where did you get your training/go to school?
High School: Eden Prairie High School, Eden Prairie, MN. (My high school physics class, where we calculated where a marble would land two stories down after rolling off of a ramp, and then having the marble land exactly where predicted – that’s when I knew engineering was for me.)
Co-op/Internship: General Dynamics Space Systems Division, San Diego, CA
College (undergrad): BS Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, University Minnesota, Minneapolis campus.
College (graduate school): MS Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle Washington
Q: Are there any classes you wish you would have taken or are glad that you took?
I’m very glad that I took a composites engineering/analysis class and a mechanics of materials class at the University of Minnesota, and got exposure to finite element modeling while an intern at General Dynamics. Those things set up the rest of my career. I wish that I would have taken a statistics class. There are so many applications for statistics with all of the data that just about any engineering or STEM career will be exposed to.
“Here’s a picture of me as a young engineer in 1995 with my wife, Karen. We’re standing in front of the 777 full-scale fatigue test.”