John W. Edwards, 1939-2011

Biographical History

John William Edwards was born in Colfax, Iowa on July 8, 1939. In 1947, his father died of a heart attack and three years later, in 1950, his mother moved with Edwards and his older brother to Portland, Oregon where she had obtained a position teaching middle school. Edwards remained in Portland until he graduated from high school and was awarded a scholarship to attend Yale University. He received a B.A. in physics from Yale in 1961 and an M.S. in physics from the University of Washington, Seattle in 1963. He served in the U.S. Peace Corps from 1963 to 1965 teaching secondary school physics in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at Haile Selaisse I University (now Addis Ababa University). In 1967, Edwards married Adelaide Majerus. They had two daughters, Susan Elizabeth (b. 1967) and Mary Joanna (b. 1968). Edwards worked at NASA as an aerospace engineer from 1965 until he retired in 2007, and continued work for NASA as a contractor to 2010.

Edwards worked at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) between 1965 and 1980, where he helped pioneer digital flight control systems. At DFRC he worked on the Lifting Body flight test program, and in 1968 was assigned to the JetStar General Purpose Airborne Simulator project, where he developed computer programs for analysis of flight simulation experiments that were used at Dryden and by the Northrop Corporation for the next two decades. Edwards also developed computer algorithms that allowed DFRC to move flight simulation from analog methods to all-digital simulation in real time. In 1970 Edwards wrote an internal memorandum advocating for a new concept: the use of digitally-controlled remotely-piloted vehicles for flight testing. This memorandum led to the development of DFRC's Remotely Piloted Research Vehicles. Edwards was lead research engineer for the PA-30 Remotely Augmented Vehicle demonstration flight tests, and for the 3/8 scale F-15 Spin Research Vehicle flight tests. This technique of using remotely-piloted vehicles was used several projects at DFRC, including the Drones for Aerodynamic and Structural Testing (DAST), Highly Maneuverable Aircraft Technology (HiMAT), High Angle-of-Attack (Alpha) Research Vehicle, and F-8 Digital Fly-by-Wire flight programs. In recognition of his "ability to apply recently developed techniques to practical flight research programs" (NASA Langley, 2004), Edwards received the National Space Club's Hugh L. Dryden Fellowship in 1974, which allowed him to pursue his Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California from 1974 to 1976.

Edwards' Ph.D. thesis, "Unsteady Aerodynamic Modeling and Active Aeroelastic Control," was completed in 1977 and resolved a longstanding theoretical dispute in Theodore Theodorsen's unsteady aerodynamic theory. With this research, Edwards helped establish the flutter analysis methods that have since become standard in the aerospace industry.

Edwards returned to DFRC in 1976 and was principal research engineer for the DAST program. In 1978, he developed an adaptive digital filter for the Space Shuttle in order to control pilot-induced oscillations caused by the vehicle's poor handling. The Pilot-Induced Oscillation Suppression filter Edwards developed was added to the Shuttle's flight control computer, and was used on all of the Shuttle's orbital missions. Edwards received a patent for the filter algorithm, as well as several NASA awards.

In 1980, Edwards transferred to NASA's Langley Research Center (LaRC), where he remained for the rest of his career. From 1981 to 1989 he was head of the Unsteady Aerodynamics Branch. He is credited with transitioning NASA from classical aeroelastic analysis methods to computational aeroelastics during this period. Under his management, the Unsteady Aerodynamics Branch developed the first code capable of transonic flutter analysis of complete vehicles. Called Computational Aeroelasticity Program-Transonic Small Disturbance (CAP-TSD), the code has been widely used throughout industry and academia.

From the 1980s through the rest of his career, Edwards organized symposia and gave lectures internationally about computational unsteady aerodynamics. He taught several graduate-level courses on aeronautics at George Washington University in affiliation with NASA's Joint Institute for the Advancement of Flight Sciences, as well as at Old Dominion University and Christopher Newport College. He was a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development, and NATO's Research and Technology Organization. He served on standing committees for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and was associate editor of AIAA's Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics from 1981 to 1983. He was also an active member of the Aerospace Flutter and Dynamics Council (known as the "Flutter Club") from 1979 through 2010. In 2001 Edwards was elected as AIAA Fellow

In 1989 Edwards returned to research as a senior research engineer in the Aeroelasticity Branch at LaRC. For the rest of his career, he concentrated on two areas of research: "shock-boundary layer interactions in transonic flutter and limit cycle oscillations, and wind tunnel model and structural vibrations" (NASA Langley, 2004). He developed a new interactive viscous boundary layer coupling method, which was incorporated into the CAP-TSD code. The resulting CAP-TSDV code enabled several first-time computations throughout the 1990s, which have been used to investigate various problems, including anomalous loads on the Space Shuttle vertical tail fin, residual pitch oscillations on the B-2 Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit (Stealth Bomber), and an unsteady hydroacoustics problems on a marine pump at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.

In 1993, Edwards' calculations on Langley's National Transonic Facility (NTF) cryogenic wind tunnel led to new insights into wind tunnel resonance processes and research into the connections between acoustics and unsteady aerodynamics. In 1997 Edwards' measurements of model and tunnel vibrations in the NTF led to formation of the NTF Model Vibrations Project within the NTF Revitalization Project. In the early 2000s Edwards was also project leader for the Model for Aeroelastic Validation Research Involving Computation (MAVRIC) wind tunnel flutter model test.

From 2000 to his retirement in 2007, Edwards was involved in several accident investigations, including the Pegasus X-43 rocket mishap investigation, the American Airlines Flight 587 Airbus crash investigation, and the Space Shuttle Columbia Return to Flight effort. His computations on the aerodynamic stability of the Space Shuttle's External Tank Protuberance Aerodynamic Load (PAL) Ramps shielding the tank's cable trays, led to the removal of the foam ramps from the Shuttle's external tank for the return to flight.

After retiring in 2007, Edwards was appointed Distinguished Research Associate at NASA, and continued to work as a contract researcher on projects for NASA, including work for the NASA Engineering and Safety Center, and on the MAVRIC project. In addition to this work, he continued to teach, give lectures, and publish papers through 2010, and continued to correspond with his peers into 2011. Edwards died June 3, 2011 in Williamsburg, Virginia.