A computer program for use in the conceptual stage of aircraft design has been developed. The program obtains minimum mass designs for high aspect ratio, composite wings, subject to constraints on flutter speed, divergence speed and material stress. The wing is modelled as a series of composite beam elements and both flutter speed and divergence speed are calculated using a normal mode approach. Modal analysis is carried out by applying the Wittrick-Williams algorithm to the dynamic stiffness method, whereas unsteady aerodynamic loads are calculated from strip theory, although an option which uses lifting-surface theory is also presented. A previously published example is given to validate the analysis. Single level optimisation is carried out using a sequential quadratic programming strategy combined with the modified methods of feasible directions optimizer, for which flutter sensitivities are obtained by an efficient determinant interpolation technique. Design variables include topological variables such as spar and engine positions as well as layer thicknesses, which are modelled using quadratic functions. The wing of a regional turboprop aircraft is optimized to illustrate the use of the program. The problem was modelled using 10 elements and had 43 design variables, 162 constraints and required just over 20 minutes of CPU time on a workstation. This, coupled with the fact that a full three-dimensional FE model of the same wing would require over 1000 elements, illustrates the suitability of the dynamic stiffness method to the conceptual design stage.

An experimental validation of an optimised wing geometry in the Price-Païdoussis subsonic wind tunnel is presented. Two wing models were manufactured using optimised glass fibre composite and tested at three speeds and various angle-of-attack. These wing models were constructed based on the original aerofoil shape of the ATR 42 aircraft and an optimised version of the same aerofoil for a flight condition of Mach number equal to 0.1 and angle-of-attack of 0°. The aerofoil's optimisation was realised using an ‘in-house’ genetic algorithm coupled with a cubic spline reconstruction routine, and was analysed using XFoil aerodynamic solver. The optimisation was concentrated on improving the laminar flow on the upper surface of the wing, between 10% and 70% of the chord. XFoil-predicted pressure distributions were compared with experimental data obtained in the wind tunnel. The transition position was estimated from the experimental pressure data using a second derivative methodology and was compared with the transition predicted by XFoil code. The results have shown the agreement between numerical and experimental data. The wind-tunnel tests have shown that the improvement of the laminar flow of the optimised wing is higher than the value predicted numerically.

An experimental study of supersonic flow over wall mounted cavities with different aft wall angles is carried out. Unsteady pressure measurements were made on the walls and floor of the cavity. Data analysis was performed on the experimental results using statistical methods. In the case of higher angled cavities, the presence of an upstream traveling acoustic wave could be confirmed. For lower angled cavities (60 degrees and less) where the acoustic wave could not be identified, the flow inside the cavity was more or less stable. Mode switching occurring in higher angled cavities was confirmed by spectrogram studies.

This paper presents investigations of low-Reynolds-number flows past an SD7003 aerofoil at Re = 60k, where transition takes place across a laminar separation bubble (LSB). Results of experimental measurements and numerical calculations are analysed and discussed. In particular, reasonably good results were obtained using two different numerical approaches: Large-eddy simulation (LES) that demonstrated vortical structures at different transition stages, and where the transition occurred naturally; unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) simulations for several turbulence models based on the ω-length-scale equation, coupled to a linear stability solver to predict the transition position.

This paper concerns the boundaries between flow regimes for sharp-edged delta wings in supersonic flow and the relation of some predictions of thin-shock-layer theory to these boundaries. In particular, it is shown that the theory predicts that the attachment lines on the lower surface of a thin delta wing at supersonic speeds suddenly jump from just inboard of the leading edges to the centre line in certain flight conditions. In general there is close agreement between the conditions for this jump and the flight conditions corresponding to the change-over from attached flow to the leading-edge separation on the upper surface. Since the movement of the attachment lines on the lower surface must change the position of the sonic line and the nature of the expansion around the edge, it is suggested that the two phenomena are directly related. Thus thin-shock-layer theory can be used to establish the boundaries of the various flow regimes for a wide range of Mach number, incidence and wing sweep. The theory can also be used to predict the effects of wing thickness on leading-edge separation, but here the experimental data is very sparse and somewhat contradictory, so the value of the prediction in the case of thickness requires further investigation.

Key issues relating to the Supersonic Business Jet (SBJ) concept are reviewed with the intent to assess the readiness of enabling technologies and hence the concept itself. The multidisciplinary nature of aircraft design precludes an in-depth analysis of each specific aspect, which could individually be the subject of a separate discipline review, hence an overview is presented.

The review looks at the market, environmental issues, with particular reference to the sonic boom phenomenon & solutions, technological issues, including prediction methods, flight testing, systems, certification and interested aerospace companies and design organisations.

It is apparent that the need to reduce the sonic boom signature is vital if the vehicle is to be permitted to operate over land and hence be economically viable. It is clear that sonic boom acceptability requirements must be set if resources are to be effectively focused and designs are to converge. Despite this challenge, considerable investment is aimed at de-risking many of the enabling technologies and raising readiness levels. Many technologies are moving beyond theoretical and numerical analysis into the experimental and flight test domains. Collaboration between the civil and military sectors is increasing.

Clearly, supersonic air travel is not an efficient means of personal conveyance; however, concerns for the environment are difficult to balance against the ‘value of time’ benefits offered by the SBJ concept. Air travel, of which this is a specialised form, is important to the global economy. Continued effort in the areas of human factors, customer demand and certification & requirements would be beneficial.

Previous papers by the authors and others have developed exact methods for computing the critical buckling loads of prismatic assemblies of rigidly interconnected thin flat rectangular plates. The plates may be isotropic or anisotropic and can carry uniform in-plane shear stresses and transverse stresses in addition to a longitudinal stress which varies linearly over the cross section but is longitudinally invariant. Published results obtained using these methods have only covered a few of the types of structure and loading which are of interest. This paper presents results which complement those already published. For instance, interaction curves are given for common types of panel in combined in-plane shear and longitudinal compression and bending. About half of these curves are nearly parabolic while some others differ greatly from the parabola, which errs on the safe side for all the results presented. Other results cover critical loads other than the lowest, panels with bulb flat stiffeners, as used for bridge decks, and the effects of assumptions usually made when idealising real panels before computation.

The method of images is used to calculate the analytical solution for an inviscid incompressible flow past four arbitrary circles which are then conformally mapped onto aerofoil sections. The analytical solution of the corresponding flow past the system of aerofoils is obtained and the pressure distributions about a particular three-element and a particular fourelement aerofoil are presented. These results are intended to be used to assess the accuracy of numerical methods.

Mesh generation is proving to be an important aspect of computational aerodynamics. Over the last few years the topic has received much attention. Methods based on the structured and unstructured philosophies both have their advantages and disadvantages. This paper discusses the possible benefits to be achieved in composite structured-unstructured meshes. An algorithm is described which can solve the Euler equations for inviscid flow on such meshes. Three applications of the composite approach are then described. The first example shows the use of regions of assembled triangles to improve the quality of flow results on a poor quality structured mesh. The second illustrates how geometrically complicated aerodynamic configurations can be treated by utilising local regions of unstructured mesh within a globally structured mesh. Finally, a method of mesh/flow adaptivity is described whereby a structured mesh is enriched in appropriate regions of the domain by the addition of meshes consisting of an assembly of triangles. The results show that distinct benefits can be obtained from this composite approach.

A method of calculation has been developed in which all terms in the momentum integral equations in the streamwise and cross-flow directions are taken into account so that no restriction to small cross-flows is imposed. The essential feature of the method is the use of an entrainment equation which enables the development of the streamwise form parameter to be calculated along with the streamwise and cross-flow momentum thicknesses. Mager’s quadratic expression is used to relate streamwise and cross-flow profiles. The method has been applied to the idealised case of an infinite swept wing with free-stream velocity over the forward part of the chord and a linear adverse velocity gradient over the rear. The position of separation, the directions of the surface streamlines and the development of streamwise and cross-flow profiles have been calculated for a series of angles of sweep and for adverse pressure gradients of varying severity.

Real-time flight data from the Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) has been integrated, through a data interface, with a flight performance computer program to predict aviation emissions at altitude. The ADS-B, along with data from Mode-S, are then used to ‘fly’ selected long-range aircraft models (Airbus A380-841, A330-343 and A350-900) and one turboprop (ATR72). Over 2,500 flight trajectories have been processed to demonstrate the integration between databases and software systems. Emissions are calculated for altitudes greater than 3,000 feet (609m) and exclude landing and take-off cycles. This proof of concept fills a gap in the aviation emissions inventories, since it uses real-time flights and produces estimates at a very granular level. It can be used to analyse emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide ($\mathrm{CO}_2$), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides ($\mathrm{NO}_x$) and water vapour on a specific route (city pair), for a specific aircraft, for an entire fleet, or on a seasonal basis. It is shown how $\mathrm{NO}_x$ and water vapour emissions concentrate around tropospheric altitudes only for long-range flights, and that the cruise range is the biggest discriminator in the absolute value of these and other exhaust emissions.

Measurements were made of the pressure in a blunt-nosed pitot tube, in an air stream at Reynolds numbers from about 15 to 1,000. The results are expressed in terms of a pressure coefficient , where P is the pressure in the pitot tube, ρ is the density of the fluid, and p and V are the static pressure and velocity in the undisturbed stream. As found in previous investigations, Cp becomes greater than 1 at low Reynolds numbers, the increase being about per cent, at a Reynolds number of 50 (based on external tube radius). In disagreement with the work of Hurd, Chesky, and Shapiro, no decrease of Cp below 1 was found at any Reynolds number.

This paper reports on the measurement of aerodynamic forces that act on a square cylinder which was downstream to an identical cylinder. When the two cylinders were in tandem formation, a critical spacing equal to about four times the side length D of the square cylinder, was found to exist. For L/D < (L/D)cri, where L is the streamwise centre to centre spacing between the two cylinders, the boundary layers which separate from the upstream cylinder reattach onto the downstream cylinder. Only the latter sheds vortices and it is subjected to a thrust rather than a drag force. For LID > (L/D)cri, both cylinders shed vortices and both are subjected to drag forces. When the two cylinders were in staggered formation, due to the presence of various lift generating mechanisms, the lift force that acts on the downstream cylinder can be either positive which points away from the wake centre line of the upstream cylinder or negative which points towards the wake centre line of the upstream cylinder. It was found that in the range 4 ⩽ LID ⩽ 12, an unstable regime exists in that the lift force generated pushes the downstream cylinder away from the upstream cylinder’s wake centre line at small dimensionless transverse spacing (Y/D) where Y is the transverse centre to centre spacing between the two cylinders and reverses its direction only at Y/D > 2. At L/D = 29, the largest streamwise spacing that can be investigated in the present study, the influence that the upstream cylinder has on the aerodynamic forces acting on the downstream cylinder was found to be still fairly appreciable.

An approximate theory of parachute opening is suggested. A formula is derived for the critical opening speed (the highest speed at which the canopy develops fully) which indicates variation of the critical speed with fabric porosity, rigging line length and so forth, of the order observed in wind tunnel tests. Assuming a simple form for the air flow about the parachute, a formula is obtained also for the rate of opening of a canopy. This enables an analysis to be made of the motion of a store-parachute system during canopy development. The theory confirms the possibility of a large increase with altitude, found experimentally, in the maximum parachute force on the store.

An analysis is presented which enables the boundary-layer thickness parameters of a re-attaching shear layer to be determined when the free-stream flow upstream of the base is supersonic, the base pressure is known, and die initial boundary layer is turbulent. The application of this analysis to some experimental results, on the flow behind blunt-trailing-edge wings and over a back-step where both the base pressure and the initial boundary layer are known, would appear to indicate that the re-attached profile could be specified by one parameter, namely the transformed shape parameter, the transformation used being a turbulent analogue of the well-known Stewartson-Illingworth transformation of the laminar boundary layer and where the shape parameter is defined as the ratio of boundary-layer displacement to momentum thickness. By adopting a value of the shape parameter in advance, it is possible to use the analysis to determine the base pressure by an iterative process and so, on this basis, it is suggested that this analysis is used to replace the existing recompression criterion of the Chapman-Korst model of separated flow which aims to predict base pressures and is known to be capable of improvement.

As part of this investigation, an improvement had to be made to the existing compressible turbulent shear layer velocity profiles of Korst and others and this was achieved by means of the compressibility transformation.

New wind tunnels appear fairly infrequently and are usually of individual design to meet specific requirements and constraints. Detailed information on existing tunnels can be of great benefit to the designer, enabling him to avoid expensive pitfalls and to capitalise on the successful features that have evolved over the years. For this reason, and to advance wind tunnel design generally, new designs should be reported. The following account is presented in this light, even though the low speed tunnel described is unremarkable, being of conventional design and modest proportions. Indeed, its design follows closely the guide-lines laid down for such tunnels by Bradshaw and Pankhurst, guide-lines which themselves draw on the cumulative experience gained from previous low speed wind tunnels. The satisfactory performance of the tunnel is in no small measure the result of this approach.

In this paper a theory of wrinkling in Sandwich Construction is presented in two parts. In the first part, the thickness of the core is regarded as finite. The wrinkling stress is given by a simple square root formula consisting of the Young's moduli of the materials and the ratio of the thickness of the face and core. In the second part of the theory the same procedure is followed, with the main difference that shearing stresses in the core are also considered, and the analysis is extended to the case where the face is supported by a sufficiently thick or a semi-infinite medium. The result for the wrinkling stress is a cubic root formula which consists of the moduli of the materials but indirectly depends upon the geometry of the structure; this formula is valid only if the ratio of the thickness of the core and the face is greater than or at least equal to the ratio of the width of the marginal zone of distortions in the core, and the thickness of the face. The width of the zone is also useful as the criterion which discriminates between the two cases of buckling as envisaged in this paper. The theory is compared with the previous works, and also with the test results already available. The selection of the experimental data comprises steel, aluminium alloy and Papreg (laminated paper plastic) as the face; and onazote, cellular cellulose acetate, granulated cork, sponge rubber and expanded formvar as the core materials over a wide range of core-face thickness ratio. The agreement between the theory and the tests is satisfactory.

Although many researchers, from a number of industries, have studied the aerodynamics of ground effect conditions, published research remains inconclusive. Published results are frequently found to conflict and modeling procedures (in both computational and experimental situations) vary. In this paper, existing research is reviewed and the methods used in obtaining the results are compared. Possible causes for the discrepancies in the published work are outlined, including the inappropriate specifications of boundary conditions and the neglect of viscosity in some computational analyses. Computational and experimental analyses are then performed to determine if these identified areas do cause inconsistencies in results and to also determine accurate simulation procedures.

An experimental investigation is presented to validate endurance estimates for a battery powered flight vehicle. In this study a radio controlled model aircraft was ‘flown’ inside a wind tunnel. Various Lithium Ion batteries were used to power the model. Battery electrical characteristics were recorded during each run to assess battery discharge behaviour. Theoretical estimates based upon battery characteristics yielded endurance estimates within 3% of that measured experimentally. The discharge characteristics of the batteries were found to be the largest source of uncertainty for endurance estimates.

A study has been made of the effects of inlet coolant injection upon axial compressor performance, using the results of tests on turboshaft engines. It is shown that evaporation of the coolant changes the stage work distribution as well as the ideal compression work and that these effects may be estimated by elementary thermodynamic methods. Simplified prediction procedures are suggested and compared with experimental results.