High Altitude Problems1938 Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology
doi: 10.1108/eb030280
THE report provided by PROFESSOR KLEMIN of the papers read at the annual meeting of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences is of particular interest on account of the fact that it contains an extended summary of one by PROFESSOR YOUNGER on Structural and Mechanical Problems Involved in Pressure Supercharged Cabin Planes. This is of topical interest to English readers because on April 21 PROFESSOR YOUNGER is to give a lecture entitled High Altitude Flying before the members of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and it is not unnatural to suppose that some part at any rate of that lecture will be devoted to these particular problems. The experience gained from the researches dealt with in the paper has been used by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in the design of the substratosphere passenger research aeroplane built to the order of the Army Air Corps. Actually, all the research and experimental work referred to was carried out by the Corps at its experimental station at Wright Field, the results being communicated to the Lockheed stall for use in the work of designing and constructing the aeroplane. No details have yet, so far as we are aware, been released of the machine, so that PROFESSOR YOUNGER'S paper contains the first information as to the features that are, presumably, incorporated in it. This machine is, of course, of considerable importance because it is the first to be built expressly fitted to carry passengers at altitudes which involve the incorporation of special provisions for the safety and comfort of the occupants.
The I.Ae.S. Annual MeetingKlemin, Alexander
1938 Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology
doi: 10.1108/eb030281
SINCE its inception, but a few years ago, the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences has grown remarkably in the size and distinction of its membership, and the technical value of the papers appearing in its journal is now thoroughly well established. Thanks in a large measure to the organizing ability of its Secretary, Lester D. Gardner, the annual meeting was a great success. For the first time in its brief history simultaneous sessions were held, a method which works out quite well in the specialized atmosphere of modern aeronautics. The great difficulty with the annual meetings of American societies is that they are so huge as to render intellectual assimilation problematical. But the geographic conditions of the United States make it impossible for members from different parts of the country to attend frequent meetings such as those of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
The Air Registration BoardSpaight, J.M.
1938 Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology
doi: 10.1108/eb030282
THE connexion is not at first sight apparent between a small, dark, sawdusty, no doubt dirty and inconvenient coffeehouse in the City of London, in the days of William and Mary, and a great modern office building, airy, spacious, centrally heated, electrically lighted, fitted with the most uptodate laboursaving equipment. There is, nevertheless, a quite definite connection. It was in such a little coffeehouse, then lately removed from Tower Street to Lombard Street, that Lloyd's Register of Shipping, in its first very primitive form as Edward Lloyd's newsletter, had its birth about the end of the seventeenth century. It is in such a great building, on the first floor of Brettenham House on the north side of Waterloo Bridge, that there has been cradled in our own days another lusty infant whose destiny it will probably be to render to aircraft the same service which Lloyd's Register has been rendering to shipping for two centuries or more.
Resonance TestsPugsley, A.G.
1938 Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology
doi: 10.1108/eb030283
THOUGH resonance tests are now becoming familiar to most aeronautical engineers, it is perhaps desirable at the outset to indicate their general nature. They are vibration tests carried out on an aeroplane with the immediate object of determining the natural frequencies and modes of its parts, and in particular, of its wings. The ultimate aim of resonance tests on a given aeroplane is to provide data to assist in the estimation of its critical flutter speeds, so that its liability to flutter troubles may be assessed.
Two D.V.L. Instruments1938 Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology
doi: 10.1108/eb030285
ONE of the activities of the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt fr Lufthfahrt has, naturally, been directed to the development of special instruments adapted for the peculiar needs of the experimental work carried out at Adlershof. Arrangements have recently been made whereby a wide range of these instruments is available in England and they can now be obtained from International Technical Developments, Ltd., of Thames House, Millbank, London, S.W.I.
Some Books Recently Received1938 Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology
doi: 10.1108/eb030287
At all times engineers have needed to know something of the properties of materials, but of late for a reason that is new. The materials of the nineteenth century were lew and traditional brick and stone, timber, wrought and cast iron, copper and its alloys with zinc and tin, all these had been used for generations, their properties were familiar, and machines had changed the tempo rather than the methods of their fabrication. Mild steel came to replace wrought iron in structural work. Steel castings were found, for certain purposes, preferable to castings in iron. Reinforced concrete showed how the merits of two materials could be combined. But the engineer, though quick to accept and use these novelties, still maintained his traditional attitude. Only in recent years, by the work of the chemist and the physicist, has his successor been given glimpses of a future in which his problems of fabrication will be solved the italics are Dr. Houwink's by the deliberate synthesis of materials with definite clastic and plastic properties. Already his list of constructional materials is lengthened by the addition of plastic resins, cellulose and protein products, artificial rubbers what is more significant, the macroscopic studies of the nineteenth century only towards its close was the microscope employed for the elucidation of finer structure have been largely superseded by methods incomparably more refined, in which the individual crystal as unit is replaced by the complex molecule, the crystalline microstructure by the crystal lattice as revealed by Xrays. We are passing, in materials, from an age of acceptance to an age of control, and henceforth engineering will demand a knowledge of materials both wider and deeper than what sufficed before the War.
The Dornier Do. 241938 Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology
doi: 10.1108/eb030288
BEARING, as it does, the unmistakable stamp of Dornier design, this flying boat makes a very interesting comparison with their earlier machinesnotably the Wal and the Do. 18. In contradistinction to the present general trend in Great Britain and the U.S.A., Herr Dornier has clung to the design involving a highwing carried on a strutted superstructure above the hull. This arrangement, judging by the appended performance figures, does not appear to cause any loss of performance although it looks considerably less clean than does a wing mounted directly upon the hull.
The Fokker T.51938 Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology
doi: 10.1108/eb030289
ALTHOUGH this aeroplane is utterly unlike the general trend of Fokker aerodynamic design, it is typical as regards structural practice. It is also not entirely irrelevant to comment on the use of the term battle planethis being the producer's own description of the machinea term which was used for certain of the heavily armed aeroplanes produced by Germany in 1918, was later applied to the multiengined, multigunned, glasssided aeroplanes developed so assiduously by the French for the past few years and has now, apparently, found another protagonist in Holland.