Books and literature

These are the proceedings of a symposium held at Stamford University and include a complete section on aircraft crashworthiness with a survey of rotary wing aircraft crashworthiness by G. T. Singley. In this he reviews and analyses the findings of the 11 year crash survival research and development programme conducted by the Eustis Directorate and covers accident investigation, crash testing of full‐scale, fully instrumented aircraft, crash injury and crashworthiness evaluation of aircraft, and aircraft mockups; and selected component and subassembly testing. An assessment of energy absorbing devices for prospective use in aircraft impact situations is made by A. A. Ezra and R. J. Fay. The subject is defined as the specific energy absorption capacity per unit weight of device or system, the efficiency of the stroke, the stroke to length ratio, the reliability, the repeatability, the ability to sustain rebound loads and the cost. Human tolerance limitations related to aircraft crashworthiness by A. I. King outlines the problems encountered in the scaling of animal data to the human level and in the correlation of single‐directional tolerance data to actual multi‐directional impacts. Jack Collins and James W. Turnbow consider the response of a scat passenger system to impulsive loading in which they present maximum system forces, displacements, velocities and accelerations as functions of velocity change, aircraft deceleration, crash pulse shape, passenger weight and scat belt slack. Also of especial interest is “Flutter prevention in design of SST” by M. J. Turner and J. B. Bartley which they discuss in relation to configuration constraints resulting from mission performance requirements. This is included in a section on structural systems and other sections in the book concern structural elements, materials and solids.