Design Notes for Glass Reinforced Plastics: Practical Notes for the Draughtsman on the Use of Low‐pressure Laminates Available to Purchase

Reinforced Plastics have been widely used in the Aircraft Industry over the past ten years, but its application is still treated as something of a special field. The purpose of these notes is to introduce the subject to the Drawing Office and to set simply before the draughtsman another engineering material. The use of plastics is not recommended for primary structure at present, due to insufficiency of test results, but for secondary structure they may offer advantages in robustness and non‐corrodibilily over light alloy, with increase in weight, and sometimes with less weight. In complex shaped fairings, the ease of forming of reinforced plastics enables the component to be moulded as an integral structure, thus reducing fabrication and consequently costs. The reduction in the number of parts means less weight and the resulting structure is often intrinsically stronger. They also have many applications where their particular properties, such as electrical properties, non‐corrodibility, acid resistance or high specific tensile strength are desirable. Typical applications for the material are summarized in TABLE I together with reasons for their use.