Advancement Of Aeronautics Research Articles

Warfare and wind tunnel: engineers, physicists, and the evolution of combat aircraft 1914-1918

Abstract The British aircraft industry was transformed across the course of the First World War. Annual output grew exponentially, while by 1917-1918 the intensity of wartime research and development saw technologically advanced machines seeking air supremacy in all theatres of operation, most notably the Western Front. Capability had been inhibited by the absence of reliable, high performance power units, but ultimately production and procurement problems were resolved. This heroic narrative warrants qualification given the high ratio of poor to outstanding aircraft and the reality that in August 1914 Britain was by no means wholly unequipped to wage war in the air: the development programmes of the National Physical Laboratory and Royal Aircraft Factory, and the Royal Naval Air Service’s collaboration with science-based companies such as Short Brothers run counter to a popular belief that machines were still crudely built and militarily ineffective. There existed a working partnership between pioneer engineers and designers, schooled in applied science at metropolitan technical colleges, and graduate physicists and mathematicians encouraged by far-sighted dons to join a fledgling but fast-growing industry. That fusion of theory and practice, academic and industrial, was consolidated once British science’s human assets were mobilised to wage ‘industrial war’. Yes, aviation saw huge changes across the War, but the continuity is striking: before 1914 designers and air frame manufacturers were drawn from both the shop floor and the varsity, a wartime infusion of research scientists generated remarkable advances in aeronautics and in consequence a vital extension of Allied air power; and after 1918 companies survived retrenchment thanks to a durable combination of the entrepreneurial engineer and the experimental analyst.

Preface

We are very pleased to introduce the proceedings of 2023 International Conference on Mechanical, Aerospace and Electronic Systems (MAES 2023). The conference was held from November 24 to 26, 2023, which is co-sponsored by University of Johannesburg, South Africa and University of South Africa, South Africa. MAES provided opportunities for discussions about methods, technologies, systems, and best practices in the different areas of mechanical, aerospace and electronic systems from different places around the world. This conference provides opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas and application experiences in hybrid format, to establish business cases or research relations and to find global partners for future collaboration. The proceedings of MAES 2023 cover a range of topics, including, but not limited to applied mechanics, automation, CAD/CAM/CAE, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), aerodynamic’s fundamental concepts, aerodynamics, aerospace robotics and mechatronics, aerospace systems and technology, advances in aeronautics and astronautics, aerospace defense systems, aerospace materials, aerospace propulsion systems, etc. On behalf of the Organizing Committee, a special thanks goes to the keynote speakers that shared their research ideas with us. Thanks are also extended to the authors of the papers selected for presentation and publication. Thanks are as well extended to the paper reviewers and the members of the organizing committee for their contribution and commitment to putting together a conference program that hopefully participants have found beneficial to advance their professional endeavor. List of Conference Committee is available in this pdf.

Design and Optimization of Lug Bracket Assembly

An aircraft is an advanced mechanical structure made by man which has been dominating the skies from the early 19th centuries. It has been used for transportation of cargo/ passengers from one place to another in a shorter period of time. Advances in aeronautics lead to the development of fighter aircrafts with exciting and dominating characteristics. A fighter aircraft is to be designed in such a way that it can withstand heavy loadings on the wing due to its high manoeuvrability. A fighter aircraft is designed to be marginally unstable, which makes control easier and better during manoeuvrability at high speeds, but in this state there is a heavy fluctuating load acting on the wing. The wing is connected to the fuselage using wing fuselage lug attachment bracket. Since the wing is a cantilever structure, the load acting on the wing is concentrated on the hinge (lug bracket assembly). In this paper, a lug bracket is designed according to the standard design procedure and is validated using Finite Element Methods to ensure the static loading capability and stress concentrations in lug bracket. The validated model has been optimized using Altair Optistruct. The optimized model has been validated under static loading condition for the stress concentration and displacement and is compared with initial model in order to study and understand its behaviour under various conditions.

Triangular blocks and wind tunnels: Augustin Rey's logic of air resistance

How does air shape our cities? How does air become a factor in urban design? In a session before the 1906 International Congress for Sanitary Dwellings, Adolphe Augustin Rey famously compared cities to vast bodies ‘furrowed by canals of air’. Rey (1864–1934), a Beaux-Arts-trained architect who would count Le Corbusier among his devotees, was then highlightinging his best-known project: the winning entry for the Fondation Rothschild's workers' housing competition in Paris. Conceived between 1905 and 1909, Rey's entry was a redesign of a triangular block formed by the Rue de Prague, Rue Charles Baudelaire, and Rue Theophile Roussel. Rey's design featured innovative open-air courtyards and perforated façades that would not only filter and cleanse the air inside the building, but would also contribute to healthier air in the city.This paper examines Rey's winning design from a different context: the burgeoning aeronautical culture in turn-of-the-century France. The focus will be on his drawings, with their depiction of buildings as white solids and of the dominant winds as dark lines of moving air with variable pressures: in short, architecture placed inside a wind tunnel. I argue that Rey's designs for the Rothschild competition provided an aerodynamic solution to urban block design. Rey's name is not usually associated with aeronautics, and yet the fact that his drawings look like wind tunnel visualisations is no mere coincidence. Here, the operative logic is that of resistance. Much like the French physiologist Xavier Bichat understood life as a product of ‘resistance’ against pathogens, Rey's designs show architecture as a product of air resistance. In the end, this paper proposes how one of the most fundamental aspects of twentieth-century urbanism, the design of the city block, can be viewed in the light of advances in aeronautics at the turn of the century.

The Langley‐Newcomb brouhaha over the flying machine

One century after the Wright brothers proved it was possible to build a piloted heavier‐than‐air “flying machine,” several airlines will soon, perhaps as early as October 2005, begin to operate the largest passenger aircraft ever built, the Airbus A380. The A380 is nearly half again as large, in terms of passenger floor space, as the Boeing 747‐400. It can be configured to hold as many as 840 passengers, and it has a takeoff weight of 550,000 kg, a maximum range of 15,000 km, and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85.The remarkable advances in aeronautics realized during the past century make it difficult to understand how anyone, let alone Simon Newcomb, one of the most prominent U.S. scientists at the turn of the twentieth century, could have opposed efforts by Samuel Pierpont Langley to build a piloted winged aircraft for the military. Newcomb argued that Langley was doomed to failure because the technology required to build such an aircraft was not then available, and he bemoaned the “waste” of scarce government funds toward the effort.

Space Tourism: The 21st Century “Frontier”

Space isn't remote at all—it's only an hour's drive away if your car could go upwards…Fred Hoyle (www.mirstation.com)Apollo 11 Astronaut, “Buzz” Aldrin who drove the lunar wagon on the first moon landing (1969) declares “We are today where the Wright Brothers were in 1903”. A century of advances in aviation technology and mass tourism have changed our global perceptions. Increased transportation speed in relation to distance has both shortened travel time and increased our travel range. Mankind has roamed our earth, conquered its highest mountain and explored the ocean depths. The next travel challenge is our last “frontier”: SPACE. The scientific challenges of this 21st century travel frontier are minimally three-fold: to develop the technology to travel and ultimately to live beyond the limits of the earth's atmosphere; to encourage the social sciences to match the scientific advances in aeronautics, astrophysics, and space medicine; and to strive for international accord in the occupancy and development of cosmic space. This article addresses the state-of-the-art in space tourism at the millennium; the historical stimuli that created a potential market of a million or more passengers, and some physical and psychological issues of extra-planetary hosts and guests. This is the first time a “host population” will be created, to staff space hotels, and initially “guests” must be screened for their aptitude and ability to “tour”.

Another Icarus: Percy Pilcher and the Quest for Flight by Philip Jarrett

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 169 and little commitment to rural development, to American agricultural economics programs, where both theory and methodology for pur­ suing applied work are steeped in simplifications inappropriate to contemporary China. All in all, Stress’s accomplishment is superb. His work is thoroughly documented with extensive notes and an excellent bibliography of Chinese- and English-language sources. Bruce Stone Mr. Stone is the coordinator for China research at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C., where he investigates economic policy impli­ cations of technical change in agricultural supply and demand development. He co­ authored Food Production in the People's Republic ofChina with Anthony Tang and recently edited Fertilizer Pricing Policy in Bangladesh. Another Icarus: Percy Pilcher and the Quest for Flight. By Philip Jarrett. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987. Pp. xi + 226; illustrations, notes, appendixes, index. $22.50. Over the last two decades we have learned about the early years of heavier-than-air flight and the major personalities who played out the technological drama that climaxed with the invention of the airplane. Charles H. Gibbs-Smith and Tom D. Crouch, especially, have studied the careers of Otto Lilienthal, Octave Chanute, Samuel P. Langley, the Wrights, and others, placing them within the context of late-19thcentury science and engineering. Together, these experimenters formed what Crouch identifies as a loosely knit transatlantic “aero­ nautical community” and generated a climate conducive to the ulti­ mate solution of what was widely regarded as the “problem of the century.” Less well known than some of the others within this com­ munity was Percy Pilcher, a young English engineer who was drawn to aeronautics in the 1890s and built and flew gliders until his tragic death in 1899. In Another Icarus, Philip Jarrett has provided the most comprehen­ sive study of Pilcher’s life and career to date. Born in 1867, Pilcher served for a time in the Royal Navy before working in the engineering department of a shipbuilder and lecturing at Glasgow University. Like many others, Pilcher marveled at the photographs of the gliding flights of Otto Lilienthal. In 1895, he visited Lilienthal to observe his ex­ periments and apparently established a regular correspondence with the German master. This turned out to be a fateful encounter, because it led Pilcher to emulate Lilienthal’s hang gliders and his acrobatic approach to the vexatious problem of in-flight control. Pilcher constructed his first glider in Scotland shortly after meeting Lilienthal and possibly flew for the first time in October 1895. Pilcher’s gliders, similar in appearance and size to Lilienthal’s, were mono­ 170 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE planes with folding, fabric-covered wings reinforced by bamboo ribs radiating from a king post on each side and braced with numerous wires. Pilcher, however, btted his later gliders with wheeled under­ carriages, which helped absorb the shock of landing and eased the task of moving the machines about on the ground. By 1898, Pilcher had built and flown an improved glider, named the Hawk, and he was developing designs for a triplane powered by a small two-cylinder engine. Throughout, he had the encouragement and assistance of his sister Ella. Pilcher persisted in his conviction that aerodynamic control surfaces were unnecessary: this, of course, greatly circumscribed his work and made it unlikely that he could have succeeded with a larger powered machine. However, he never had to face that reality, for the tail of the Hawk collapsed in midair during a routine flight at Stanford Hall in 1899. Pilcher died a few days later from the injuries sustained in the crash. Another Icarus is likely to be considered the definitive biography of Percy Pilcher. Jarrett has pieced together Pilcher’s story despite the dearth of primary sources—Pilcher was a “reluctant correspondent” (p. ix) and did not leave behind a body of letters or other unpublished materials. Further, Jarrett provides a balanced assessment of Pilcher’s accomplishments, stressing that he “made no revolutionary scientific or technical contributions to the advancement ofaeronautics” (p. 147). Yet Pilcher does deserve such extended treatment, because he was, as Jarrett writes, “the first man in Britain to design, construct, and...

History of Rocketry and Astronautics ed. by R. Cargill Hall

170 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE planes with folding, fabric-covered wings reinforced by bamboo ribs radiating from a king post on each side and braced with numerous wires. Pilcher, however, btted his later gliders with wheeled under­ carriages, which helped absorb the shock of landing and eased the task of moving the machines about on the ground. By 1898, Pilcher had built and flown an improved glider, named the Hawk, and he was developing designs for a triplane powered by a small two-cylinder engine. Throughout, he had the encouragement and assistance of his sister Ella. Pilcher persisted in his conviction that aerodynamic control surfaces were unnecessary: this, of course, greatly circumscribed his work and made it unlikely that he could have succeeded with a larger powered machine. However, he never had to face that reality, for the tail of the Hawk collapsed in midair during a routine flight at Stanford Hall in 1899. Pilcher died a few days later from the injuries sustained in the crash. Another Icarus is likely to be considered the definitive biography of Percy Pilcher. Jarrett has pieced together Pilcher’s story despite the dearth of primary sources—Pilcher was a “reluctant correspondent” (p. ix) and did not leave behind a body of letters or other unpublished materials. Further, Jarrett provides a balanced assessment of Pilcher’s accomplishments, stressing that he “made no revolutionary scientific or technical contributions to the advancement ofaeronautics” (p. 147). Yet Pilcher does deserve such extended treatment, because he was, as Jarrett writes, “the first man in Britain to design, construct, and make successful flights in heavier-than-air aircraft” (p. 148). I wish, however, that Jarrett had been more explicit about Pilcher’s place within Crouch’s technological “community.” Although Pilcher’s connections with Maxim and Chanute receive considerable attention, it might have been in­ structive had Jarrett delved more deeply into the context of Pilcher’s empirical approach to heavier-than-air flight. It was, after all, the methodology of the engineer and not that of the scientist that even­ tually led to the Wrights’ success. Jarrett’s book nevertheless is a wor­ thy addition to the growing literature on the early history of flight. William F. Trimble Dr. Trimble is assistant professor of history at Auburn University. With W. David Lewis, he is the author of The Airway to Everywhere: A History of All American Aviation, 1937—1953, published in 1988 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. History of Rocketry and Astronautics. Edited by R. Cargill Hall. 2 vols. San Diego, Calif.: Univelt for the American Astronautical Society, 1986. Pp. xii + 238/489; illustrations, notes, indexes. $100.00 (cloth); $80.00 (paper) the set. In aerospace history, as in most everything else, there is a critical need for international understanding. Too many authors still tell their TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 171 stories without sufficient consideration of international contributions and their worldwide context and significance. Too many museums trumpet national achievements as if other national experiences have been irrelevant to human progress into air and space. Too many scholars have never attended a symposium or conference outside their own borders. For that reason and others, too many American aero­ space historians cannot name even one of their Soviet or Western European counterparts. One American aerospace historian who is familiar with the inter­ national community of aerospace historians is R. Cargill Hall, histo­ rian at the United States Air Force Historical Research Center at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama and editor of this welcome an­ thology published by the American Astronautical Society. In a twopart volume containing thirty-nine essays, fourteen of his authors are American; the other twenty-five are: Soviet (twelve), Spanish (three), Polish, Austrian, West German, Swiss (two each), Swedish, and Hun­ garian. The result is a smorgasbord that whets the appetite for more foreign offerings in aerospace history. Unfortunately, the food for thought here has been sitting out on the table for some time. The International Academy of Astronautics (IAS) has sponsored a symposium on the history of aeronautics at the annual congress of the International Astronautical Federation since 1967, with the idea of publishing proceedings in English and Russian. The essays in...

The Role of Competition in Aeronautics

It is a great privilege to be here before you today at this lecture which honours the memory of Wilbur and Orville Wright and all that they brought to that very favourite subject of all of us—Aeronautics. I have chosen as my topic for tonight “The Role of Competition in Aeronautics”. My thesis is that competition has been extremely important in the advancement of aeronautics through the years. Much progress has come in the heat of competition. The monetary costs of competition are small and completely overshadowed by the economic benefits accruing from competition. Competition has been the life blood of aeronautics. We must keep competition alive. My objective in this paper is to stimulate in each member of this audience a strong personal belief that competition has been a major contributor to making aeronautics what it is today and a most necessary ingredient in the future of aeronautics.

The Rocket Propulsion Establishment, Westcott

In the first issue of the Journal for 1966, the Centenary Year of the Royal Aeronautical Society, an account of the history of the Rocket Propulsion Establishment, no matter how brief, may appear to some as an unwarrantable intrusion. It is in this year, 1966, that the Establishment will complete only its second decade of existence, but it may claim to have contributed to the advancement of aeronautics, in the broadest sense of this term.

Continuous pyrolytic graphite composite filaments

Advances in aeronautics and astronautics have created a need for new and improved structural and thermally protective materials, which are stable or capable of accommodating ultra high temperatures, mechanically erosive forces, and chemically corrosive environments. New physical forms of materials are thus being developed at an urgent pace, and of these, filamentary reinforced composites are among the most promising. For thermally protective use, carbon and graphite fiber reinforced composites have considerable merit, but current forms of the materials have some deficiencies. Through in-house research by the Air Force Materials Laboratory, continuous pyrolytic graphite filaments have now been synthesized in diameters from 25 to 125 /z and individual lengths up to 2600 ft. They are composed of an inner core of tungsten carbide with an overcoating of a pyrolytic refractory-like highly turbostatic carbon. To obtain these filamentous materials, a novel and versatile laboratory apparatus was designed, built, and successfully operated. The newly developed filamentous materials have potential uses in many future Air Force applications, like ablative and reinforced plastic structures, filament-wound composites, thermal insulation inflatable re-entry structures, thermally protective fabrics, and possibly other important uses. I. Introduction E NVIRONMENTS of very high temperature, high shear force and chemical reactivity have been generated by modern rocketry. Ablative and structural composite materials containing fibrous reinforcements have shown great potential for withstanding such environments. However, currently available fibers may not be entirely adequate for future uses because of the ever increasing material property requirements (thermal stability, strength, capability, etc.), and the associated effects of hyperenvironmental constituents on material performance. Highly refractory materials in bulk form have been made available which meet some of the anticipated future needs. Refractory fiber reinforced composites are preferred to bulk materials, however, because of their inherent versatility and the ability to tailor properties to the specific application requirements. Fibrous refractories for these composites are not presently available in proper compositions, physical structure, or amounts, and thus considerable interest exists in preparing such materials. The objective of this report concerns the preparation of pyrolytic graphite in continuous filament form. The research program designed to fulfill the objective was detailed into the following phases: 1) develop a laboratory apparatus for obtaining continuous pyrolytic graphite filaments; 2) examine the utility of existing chemical vapor-plating processes and improve them in applicable areas; 3) investigate the suitability of various hydrocarbon compounds as the graphite precursor material; and 4) produce continuous lengths of pyrolytic graphite filaments using a tungsten wire substrate.

The Metalclad Airship

An invitation to address the Royal Aeronautical Society, the first Society of its kind ever founded, is indeed a signal honour and not without misgivings to a humble visitor who, in the land of Elizabethan English, finds himself embarrassed for words adequate to express his appreciation. The scientific contribution of the Society to the advancement of aeronautics and the meritorious achievements of its members are well known in the United States.A sort of unselfish and patient willingness, which encourages men to depart from beaten paths and invade unknown realms to bring forth something new and beneficial to society, is indispensable to any new enterprise, and most characteristic of those who are pioneers in airship development. Certainly none so far have garnered any substantial profits.