This paper addresses a methodology to parametrically size thermal control subsystems for high-speed transportation systems during the conceptual design phase. This methodology should be sufficiently general to be exploited for the derivation of Estimation Relationships (ERs) for geometrically sizing characteristics as well as mass, volume and power budgets both for active (turbopumps, turbines and compressors) and passive components (heat exchangers, tanks and pipes). Following this approach, ad-hoc semi-empirical models relating the geometrical sizing, mass, volume and power features of each component to the operating conditions have been derived. As a specific case, a semi-empirical parametric model for turbopumps sizing is derived. In addition, the Thermal and Energy Management Subsystem (TEMS) for the LAPCAT MR2 vehicle is used as an example of a highly integrated multifunctional subsystem. The TEMS is based on the exploitation of liquid hydrogen boil-off in the cryogenic tanks generated by the heat load penetrating the aeroshell throughout the point-to-point hypersonic mission. Eventually, specific comments about the results will be provided together with suggestions for future improvements.

A thermodynamically-based work potential theory for modelling progressive damage and failure in fibre-reinforced laminates is presented. The current, multiple-internal state variable (ISV) formulation, enhanced Schapery theory, utilises separate ISVs for modelling the effects of damage and failure. Damage is considered to be the effect of any structural changes in a material that manifest as pre-peak non-linearity in the stress versus strain response. Conversely, failure is taken to be the effect of the evolution of any mechanisms that results in post-peak strain softening. It is assumed, matrix microdamage is the dominant damage mechanism in continuous, fibre-reinforced, polymer matrix laminates, and its evolution is captured with a single ISV. Three additional ISVs are introduced to account for failure due to mode I transverse cracking, mode II transverse cracking, and mode I axial failure. Using the stationarity of the total work potential with respect to each ISV, a set of thermodynamically consistent evolution equations for the ISVs is derived. Typically, failure evolution (i.e. post-peak strain softening) results in pathologically mesh dependent solutions within a finite element method numerical setting. Therefore, consistent characteristic element lengths are introduced into the formulation of of the three failure potentials. The theory is implemented into commercial FEM software. The model is verified against experimental results from a laminated, quasi-isotropic, T800/3900-2 panel containing a central notch. Global load versus displacement, global load versus local strain gauge data, and macroscopic failure paths obtained from the models are compared to the experiments. Finally, a sensitivity study is performed on the failure parameters used in the model.

Aspects of the turbulent wind environment Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) experience when flying outdoors were replicated in a large wind tunnel. An overview of the facility, instrumentation and initial flight tests is given. Piloting inputs and aircraft accelerations were recorded on fixed and rotary wing MAVs and for some tests, measurements of the approach flow (u,v,w sampled at 1,250Hz at four laterally disposed upstream locations) were made. The piloting aim was to hold straight and level flight in the 12m wide × 4m high × ~50m long test section, while flying in a range of turbulent conditions. The Cooper-Harper rating system showed that a rotary craft was less sensitive to the effects of turbulence compared to the fixed wing craft and that while the fixed wing aircraft was relatively easy to fly in smooth air, it became extremely difficult to fly under high turbulence conditions. The rotary craft, while more difficult to fly per. se., did not become significantly harder to fly in relatively high turbulence levels. However the rotary craft had a higher mass and MOI than the fixed wing craft and further work is planned to understand the effects of these differences.

The lateral dynamic stability and control of a large receiver aircraft was considered during air-to-air refuelling. A simple aerodynamic model was developed in order to determine the aerodynamic forces and moments acting on the receiver aircraft due to the tanker aircraft's vortex field. These forces and moments were then expressed in derivative form and included in the linearised equations of motion. Solution of these equations revealed a divergent oscillation, characteristic of air-to-air refuelling and consisting mainly of bank and sideways displacements. An approximation to this mode, which highlights two important aerodynamic derivatives was made. The values of these derivatives depend mainly on the vertical separation between the tanker and receiver aircraft and the ratio of the tanker-to-receiver aircraft wing spans. In flight, it appears that the pilot controls the divergent mode by frequent alternate movements of the ailerons.

One of the important tasks that air traffic management services are faced with today is the task of maximising airport capacity. This can be achieved at the tactical level through proper organisation of air traffic around an airport. In recent years, many methods and algorithms for scheduling aircraft landings have been developed; they take into account various optimisation goals. The aim of this paper was to create a method that would allow one to evaluate landing aircraft sequences resulting from these control algorithms, especially in the presence of random disturbances. This method involves modelling the landing aircraft sequence by using Petri nets. The model and the computer tool that have been developed make it possible to take into account different kinds of disturbances and examine the effectiveness of various control strategies under these conditions. This paper presents two experiments that test disturbances with different characteristics and of different intensities. It has been shown that small but more frequent disturbances lead to the worsening of evaluation scores for a given sequence to a lesser extent than rare but larger disturbances. This is particularly important for control algorithms in which the focus is on high aircraft density. If the type of particular disturbances is properly assessed, then it will be possible to assist the decision-maker (air traffic controller) by providing him/her with quantitative evaluations of possible solutions.

In the investigation of approximate numerical values of overtone frequencies of a turbine blade it is desirable to know formulae for certain integrals of the modes of vibration of an ordinary cantilever beam. The first object of this paper is to obtain such formulae and to arrange them in tabulated form. By proceeding along the lines of the calculus of perturbations, these results may then be used to obtain new formulae which give second order approximations for the effects of uniform breadth and thickness tapers on the overtone frequencies. The theory gives good agreement with experiments for tapers which do not exceed about 0·5, which is present-day practice for turbine blading.

The fluctuating loading on a cylindrical bluff body due to vortex shedding increases if the body is capable of vibration. This is a result of amplification of the fluctuating pressures around a two-dimensional section of the body together with an improvement of the spanwise correlation of the vortex shedding. Measurement of the fluctuating forces on the cylinder during this process gives no guide as to the relative magnitude of these effects. In this paper, root mean square fluctuating pressure distributions and pressure correlations across a chord are presented for a square cylinder with front face normal to the approach flow whilst stationary and during forced vibration. The fluctuating lift coefficient for a two-dimensional section of the cylinder and its maximum amplification during vibration are calculated.

This paper reports an experimental investigation into the impingement of three jets from a convergent, conically divergent nozzle on to three cones of apex angles 120°, 90° and 60°. The exit Mach number of the nozzle was 2.2 and the jets were produced by operating with ratios of nozzle lip pressure to ambient pressure of 1, 1.2 and 2. The cones were arranged symmetrically in the jets at nozzle to apex distances of 0, 1 and 2 times the nozzle exit diameter. Surface pressures and shadowgraph pictures are presented. The most striking feature of the flows is the shock pattern produced by the interaction between the cone shock and the jet shock. This pattern can take a wide variety of forms depending on the structure of the free jet and strongly influences the form of the surface pressure distribution. For the most part, the flows can be explained on the basis of inviscid behaviour.

The SMARTFIRE computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software was used to predict the ‘possible’ behaviour of airflow as well as the spread of fire and smoke within a Swissair configured McDonnell Douglas MD-11 commercial transport aircraft. This work was undertaken by the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) of the University of Greenwich as part of Transportation Safety Board (TSB) of Canada, Fire & Explosion Group’s investigation into the in-flight fire occurrence onboard Swissair Flight 111 (SR111): TSB Report Number A98H0003. The main aims of the CFD analysis were to develop a better understanding of the possible effects, or lack thereof, of numerous variables relating to the in-flight fire. This assisted investigators in assessing possible fire dynamics for cause and origin determination. In Part 1, the numerical analyses to pre-fire airflow patterns within the cockpit and its vicinity are presented. The pre-fire simulations serve two ends. One is to provide insight into the flow patterns within the cockpit and its vicinity and further supportive numerical evidence for the airflow flight test observations. The other is to provide plausible initial flow conditions for fire simulations. In this paper, some flow patterns at a number of primary locations within the cockpit and its vicinity are highlighted and the predicted flow patterns are compared with the findings from the airflow flight tests. The predicted patterns are found to be in good qualitative agreement with the experimental test findings.

This paper discusses how the inevitable limitations of computing power available to designers has restricted adoption of optimisation as an essential design tool. It is argued that this situation will continue until optimisation algorithms are developed which utilise the range of available analysis methods in a manner more like human designers. The concept of multi-level algorithms is introduced and a case made for their adoption as the way forward. The issues to be addressed in the development of multi-level algorithms are highlighted.

The paper goes on to discuss a system developed at Southampton University to act as a test bed for multi-level algorithms deployed on a realistic design task. The Southampton University multi-level wing design environment integrates drag estimation algorithms ranging from an empirical code to an Euler CFD code, covering a 150,000 fold difference in computational cost. A simple multi-level optimisation of a civil transport aircraft wing is presented.

The application of optical imaging techniques to hypersonic facilities is discussed and examples of experimental measurements are provided. Traditional Schlieren and shadowgraph techniques still remain as inexpensive and easy to use flow visualisation techniques. With the advent of faster cameras, these methods are becoming increasingly important for time-resolved high-speed imaging. Interferometry’s quantitative nature is regularly used to obtain density information about hypersonic flows. Recent developments have seen an extension of the types of flows that can be imaged and the measurement of other flow parameters such as ionisation level. Planar laser induced fluorescence has been used to visualise complex flows and to measure such quantities as temperature and velocity. Future directions for optical imaging are discussed.

Detailed numerical simulations have been carried out on a spiked blunt body with multiple hemispherical disks using a commercial CFD code in order to investigate their effectiveness in reducing the aerodynamic drag and heating. The base configuration is a hemispherical cylinder whose diameter is 40 mm with an overall length of 70 mm. The lengths of the aerospikes investigated are 1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5 times the base diameter of the cylinder and the radii of the aerodisks are varied between 0.05, 0.1, 0.15 and 0.2 times the diameter of the cylinder. Besides these, the position of the aerodisks is varied with the rearmost aerodisk placed at 25%, 50% and 75% along the length of the aerospike and the intermediate aerodisk for three-disk cases, positioned at 25%, 50% and 75% of the distance between the front and the rearmost disk. All the investigations have carried out at a freestream Mach number of 6.2 and Reynolds number of 2.64 × 107/m. It has been observed that the multidisk spikes are advantageous for the purpose of reduction of both aerodynamic drag and heating at hypersonic speed. The two aerodisk spiked configurations show better results in terms of aerodynamic heating and drag in comparison to the single-disk aerospikes while the three-disk spikes yield only a marginal reduction in aerodynamic drag over the two-disk configurations. For reduction of heat fluxes and heat transfer rates though, the three-disk configurations are extremely advantageous and give much larger reductions are compared to the two-disk configurations.

The start condition of a second-throat ejector-diffuser (STED) system has been studied by solving the axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations with a high order conservative supra-characteristics method (CSCM). According to the conventional concept, when a STED is started, the flow passing through the second-throat contraction should be supersonic so that the normal shock swallowing condition applying for a supersonic windtunnel holds. The present numerical results, however, suggest that a STED can be started with a normal shock forming ahead of the second-throat contraction because the high speed flow in the region close to the wall of the diffuser serves to release the mass blocked by the normal shock, leading to a decrease in chamber pressure as well as the start of the system. This not only contradicts the conventional concept of the start of a STED, but also provides an explanation for the experimental discrepancy between the start conditions of a STED and a supersonic windtunnel.

This paper investigates the problem of coning motion stability of spinning missiles equipped with strapdown seekers. During model derivation, it is found that the scaling factor error between the strapdown seeker and the onboard gyro introduces an undesired parasitic loop in the guidance system and, therefore, results in stability issues. Through stability analysis, a sufficient and necessary condition for the stability of spinning missiles with strapdown seekers is proposed analytically. Theoretical and numerical results reveal that the scaling factor error, spinning rate and navigation ratio play important roles in stable regions of the guidance system. Consequently, autopilot gains must be checked carefully to satisfy the stability conditions.

A constant temperature hot-wire anemometer enabling automatic rapid scanning of the wire overheat was built to perform free stream disturbance measurements in the shock wind tunnel of the Institute for Aerodynamics and Gasdynamics at Stuttgart University. It is shown that such a system brings real advantages in terms of testing time. The change of bridge dynamic behaviour with wire temperature is taken into account by measuring the bridge frequency response with a very fast electrical test and postprocessing the data. The method of operation is validated in a supersonic suck down wind tunnel and a comparison with a commercial constant temperature bridge shows good agreement. Results of free stream disturbance measurements in a short duration supersonic wind tunnel of 120ms testing time are presented.

As a guest of the Royal Aeronautical Society, I wish first to express my sincere appreciation of the opportunity to join those others who have appeared before you in years past to present the Wilbur Wright Memorial Lectures. To those of us who are primarily concerned with the scientific aspects of aviation this continuing series of lectures, now nearly as old as the art of human flight itself, is the finest tribute that could be offered in honour of the accomplishments of the Wright brothers. It is on this account that I feel most sincerely the honour and privilege that has been granted me through your invitation to present the Twenty-seventh Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture.

The title—“ Some Modern Methods of Research in the Problems of Flight ”— is, I confess, somewhat ambiguous. At the time it was selected, some months ago, several investigations then in progress gave promise of results sufficientlyinteresting to be included.

This paper describes a series of steady and time-dependent pressure measurements on a half-model of a rectangular wing of aspect ratio 4. The wing was mounted on a half-body attached to a sidewall of the RAE 8 x 8 ft wind tunnel and the tests were made at Mach numbers of 0·20, 0·42, 0·70, 0·80 and 0·85 with fixed transition and a Reynolds number of about 2·5 x 106 at the highest Mach number. The wing was oscillated about its mid-chord axis at four frequencies giving frequency parameters up to 1·15 at M = 0·20 and 0·25 at M = 0·85. The static angle of incidence was varied from –10° to + 10°.

Selected mean and oscillatory measurements are offered as a challenge to computational fluid dynamicists for this simple three-dimensional configuration. Comparisons are made with calculations by means of subsonic linearised theory and recent transonic small perturbation methods. The measurements are of particular interest at transonic speeds, where both attached and incipient separated flows are considered.

In this work, we qualify and quantify the advantages of using SODAR (sonic detection and ranging) from current scenarios of Aeronautical Meteorology, with the goal of establishing a conceptual model for runway change procedures at Guarulhos International Airport (São Paulo, Brazil). The methods consist of analysing data from the Department of Airspace Control (DECEA) and Brazilian Airport Infrastructure (Infraero) about the reports of runway changes in Guarulhos in addition to SODAR data from September 2011 and December 2013. It is noted that in 234 analysed cases of runway change, there were significant periods of weak-intensity wind on the surface as well as the anticipated modification wind direction at altitude detected by sonic detection and ranging (SODAR), indicating future changes in levels closer to the surface. By examining the intersection of both scenarios, it is possible to observe that there is enough time for the air traffic controller to anticipate the needed runway change while minimising the impact on the aircraft flow, and this period has an average duration of 1 hour and 24 minutes. This confirms that the preliminary analysis of the information provided by SODAR can help predict alterations in wind direction, requiring redirection and bringing advantages in economic and security terms.

Advances in space activity are linked to reductions in launch cost. Air-breathing propulsion-assisted flight systems offer the potential for revolutionary change of the space operations paradigm. Horizontal launch of a space-access system provides mission flexibility, responsiveness, and affordability. One way to reduce launch cost is to increase the Mach number at which a launch vehicle is staged from a carrier aircraft. Without exceeding the engine and airframe design limits, the pre-compressor cooling technology allows an operational aircraft to operate at Mach numbers and altitudes beyond its basic operational limits. This is an essential, near-term technology for reducing launch cost to place small-weight payloads in low Earth orbit. The advantage of this technology is assessed with a modified McDonnell Douglas QF-4C aircraft. Payloads are unachievable or marginal with an unmodified QF-4C. However, payloads weighing around 150 pounds are plausible with this aircraft when incorporating the water injection pre-compressor cooling (WIPCC) technology.

This paper describes a study to characterise the impact threat to aircraft from runway debris. This work investigated the likelihood of an event exceeding a critical impact energy; it did not address the probability of an event occurring. Runway debris was collected from six airfields and parameters such as size fraction, mass, density, bluntness and material type were characterised. The distribution of the stone mass against frequency was accurately modelled and based on this, an expression was developed for the probability of an impact exceeding a critical level during a single take-off or landing. By considering the probability of a 50J impact from runway debris as a once in a lifetime event, the implication is that the actual threat is significantly more than the currently perceived threat. This study provides the foundations for more comprehensive studies and will give the designers improved understanding of the threat to aircraft from runway debris.