The Fourth Anglo‐American Aeronautical Conference Available to Purchase

This paper contains a broad discussion of some of the more important structural problems in high per‐formance aircraft and some of the methods and materials currently available to the aircraft designer for their solution. The constant demand for refined design and advanced performance has brought new modes of failure and new prominence for classic phenomena such as thermal stresses, creep, nuclear radiation, fatigue, elastic effects and transient stresses. These phenomena are discussed and some observa‐tions on the means of coping with them are included. Man‐power utilization, organizational refinements, computing machinery, flight load measurements, structural testing facilities and stress analysis data are the devices discussed from this standpoint. An im‐posing array of materials is at the disposal of the air‐craft designer and new materials being developed to improve structural efficiency and to help in sur‐mounting the difficulties of higher performance. High heat‐treated steel, 78ST, titanium and certain plastics are discussed briefly, and some potentialities for the future are mentioned. It is concluded that powerful tools are available to provide safe, efficient and prac‐tical structures for high performance aircraft and that structures can keep pace with developments in the science of flight.