The S.A.E. Meeting at Detroit: Abstracts of Papers Read on Load Factors, Navigation, Engines, and Cognate Subjects

AEROPLANE designing is the only branch of structural engineering making any pretence of strength calculation in which such calculations are based upon a direct empirical assumption or specification of the total forces acting upon specific parts of the structure and, as a rule, having little or no relation to one another. Whether our load factors are sound throughout, no one can be certain. Although the United States Department of Commerce and the British authorities are each satisfied with their own load factors, neither has given an adequate reason for believing its practice to be right. Whereas the American and the British specifications have suggested until recently, and the British regulations still indicate, that weight of the aeroplane alone determines the maximum loads to which the wing structure is subjected, the author asserts positively that this is not true and that the gross weight may not even be a primary factor.