Contribution to the Structural Analysis of Swept Wings: A Method Suggested for the Approximate Determination of Skin Thicknesses

THE St. Venant theory as applied to long beams of constant cross‐section could generally be used with sufficient accuracy for the solution of the structures encountered in aircraft until the last few years. The wings of high‐speed aircraft, with smaller aspect ratios, large angles of sweep‐back, and small thickness/chord ratios, introduce a new problem. There is an extensive literature on the subject, and all the methods which have been proposed are necessarily studies of redundant systems, the degree of redundancy varying according to the accuracy required. As these solutions require that the scantlings of the structure be known in advance, it was thought interesting to establish a simple method which would determine to a good approximation the skin thicknesses required. This is based on the application of the theorem of least work, which gives exact solutions of elasticity problems so long as all the terms in the strain energy expression are taken into account.