About Alan Arnold Griffith
Alan Arnold Griffith was an English engineer and the son of Victorian science fiction writer George Griffith. Among many other contributions, he is best known for his work on stress and fracture in metals that is now known as metal fatigue, as well as being one of the first to develop a strong theoretical basis for the jet engine. Griffith's advanced axial-flow turbojet engine designs were integral in the creation of Britain's first operational axial-flow turbojet engine, the Metropolitan-Vickers F.2, which first ran successfully in 1941. Griffith, however, had little direct involvement in actually producing the engine, after he moved in 1939 from leading the engine department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment to start work at Rolls-Royce. Griffith took a first in mechanical engineering, followed by a master's degree and a Doctorate from the University of Liverpool. Griffith is more famous for a theoretical study on the nature of stress and failure due to crack propagation in brittle materials such as glass. Griffith discovered that there were many microscopic cracks in every material, and hypothesized that these cracks lowered the overall strength of the material.
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