Alan Arnold Griffith

Alan Arnold Griffith (1893 to 1963) was an English engineer who worked on the strength of materials and on the theory of the jet engine. His 1920 study of rupture in brittle materials such as glass, which explained failure through microscopic cracks, founded what became known as metal fatigue and fracture mechanics. In 1926 he published An Aerodynamic Theory of Turbine Design, showing that existing turbine blades were flying stalled and proposing airfoil-shaped blades, and it described an engine with an axial compressor and a two-stage turbine that foreshadowed the turboprop. His axial-flow turbojet designs fed into Britain's first operational axial-flow turbojet, the Metropolitan-Vickers F.2, which first ran in 1941. He trained at the University of Liverpool, joined the Royal Aircraft Factory in 1915 and led the engine department of the Royal Aircraft Establishment before moving to Rolls-Royce in 1939, where his project concept lay behind the Avon engine.