Harriet has spent twenty years making carbon fibre behave in public. Her group works on damage-tolerant aerostructures and the awkward gap between a beautiful coupon and a certifiable part.
She is the person you telephone when a prototype has passed every test except the one that matters. She will tell you, kindly, which assumption you fell in love with.
Most of her group's output is unglamorous by design: building-block test pyramids, bonded joint substantiation, and repair schemes that can be executed by a technician in a hangar rather than a doctoral student in a laboratory. She takes the view that a structure which cannot be inspected has not been designed, only drawn.
She sits on two industrial review panels and has developed a reputation for asking, early and without much ceremony, what the load case actually is. Teams find this irritating in month one and quote her approvingly in month nine.
Selected projects
Named work, with a sentence of context each.
Thermoplastic wing rib demonstrator
Led the structural substantiation for a welded thermoplastic rib concept, including the fatigue programme that ruled out one of the two joining routes. The negative result saved a supply-chain commitment.
Bonded repair qualification
Developed a building-block test programme for a bonded composite repair scheme, written so that the evidence pyramid mapped directly onto the airworthiness argument rather than needing translation afterwards.
Impact damage inspection thresholds
Worked with an MRO partner to establish detectability thresholds for barely visible impact damage on a real fleet, using service-damaged panels rather than laboratory coupons.
Working with Pemberton
A first engagement usually starts with a two-hour session in which she asks to see the load case, the inspection plan and the failure that prompted the call. If those three things are not written down, that becomes the first deliverable.
Her group works to industrial reporting standards and expects test articles to arrive with a traceable history. She is content to work under a non-disclosure agreement and unwilling to sign one that prevents her students from ever publishing anything.
Looking for
Industrial problems with a real load case, not a brochure.
Probably not for
Concept studies that need a supportive opinion for a funding bid. She will give an honest one instead, which is rarely the same thing.
Credits and contributions
- Contributor to industry guidance on damage tolerance for bonded composite structure
- Reviewer for two national aerospace research programmes
- Supervisor of eleven completed doctorates, seven now in industry
- Regular expert witness on composite failure investigations