In the earlier military aircraft designed since the last war, equipments and systems were generally isolated, each performing its own function independently of the others. Methods of checking correct behaviour of the aircraft system were generally by means of switching on and operating the equipment under reasonably known conditions—that is, for example, observing that indicators showed the correct situation. The methods of flight testing where there was no ready display indication were simply go, no-go methods which generally speaking merely indicated that power was supplied to the equipment under examination. In the Canberra for instance although fairly reasonable space was available, airborne checking in-flight was fairly minimal, most of the system tests taking place prior to flight and in some cases prior to installation of the equipment. With the advent of more miniaturised electronics it was possible to achieve more integrated systems and also system testing, although the natural trend towards smaller and faster aircraft rendered space a premium and therefore such functions more difficult. In the Lightning aircraft there appeared for the first time a fully integrated flight control system which was potentially integrated with the radar system. Figure 1 is a flow diagram which shows a considerable amount of system inter-relationship. In addition there originated a requirement for an automatic test system which was developed and gave a first experience of the use of a complex computer in the testing field. The main problems associated with its use lay in the difficult and time-taking connection to the aircraft and the fact that build up of adverse tolerances in the equipment could result in the rejection of systems which were themselves flight worthy. These factors resulted in the system being only viable at second line. A considerable number of lessons were learnt, however, which have since been applied on a smaller but equally complex scale.

Everyone who has had the opportunity of speaking on this annual occasion when we remember Sir Richard Fairey, will have expressed their gratitude to the officers of this branch for their invitation to speak. Certainly for me this expression of thanks is no mere formality because for rather more than 30 years it has been my good fortune to have known most of the officers of the branch and, indeed, a number of the members of this audience.

Secondly, because it was my lot to have been serving with the British Admiralty delegation in Washington at the time when Sir Richard Fairey was leading the British Air Commission in the American capital as its director-general. His leadership was a memorable one, and typical of the man. Certainly he would have had no doubts about speaking on the subject which has been chosen for me tonight—that is, the future of the European Aerospace Industry.

Barnes has said ‘simulation is like a meal in a restaurant —more depends on the way it is prepared and served than on the basic ingredients'. We know a good deal about the ingredients, the hardware, of the simulator meal but we are not yet particularly good cooks. The lore of cooking has largely been obtained by ad hoc experiments, and at its highest expression is an art; the same is still true, in the main, of simulation techniques. Simulation should come of age. The precocious youngster grew up relatively undisciplined using the sledge-hammer of technology in an endeavour to produce a ground-borne aeroplane, with little science used in identifying the requirements.

It is my privilege this evening to pay tribute to one of the truly great men of British Aviation—Mr. C. C. Walker—in the centenary year of his birth.

C. C. Walker was born in Highgate on 25th August 1877, and in his boyhood there was only a limited degree of general interest in the possibility of powered flight. Most people regarded it as a Jules Verne idea—what we should today call ‘Science Fiction’.

However, his interest was clearly aroused and he had an early appreciation that the problems were soluble. In his own Reminiscences of Fifty Years of Aviation published in the Society’s Centenary Journal, he recalls a ride in Maxim’s steam-driven multiplane in 1894 and it is on record that at the age of sixteen he lectured to a boys’ club on the subject of flying. What a pity that the text has not survived.

Standardisation of hardware and procedures is not new to industry in general or the aerospace industry in particular. Sir Joseph Whitworth was a contributor with his thread form, as far back as 1841 and it is still used by industry today. Indeed, one of the major peripheral influences when designing a new product, or engineering it for manufacture, is the need for a logical application of a standardisation policy. This ranges from procedures, practices, materials, methods, treatments and finishes, to the use of hardware. To a very great extent the commercial success of our products in aerospace is dependent upon a sound basis of engineering standardisation, developed over many years with painstaking care.

Most of us engaged in the engineering aspect of our industry have probably had something to do with formulating a standard practice or method, without necessarily recognising it as such. But it is sometimes astonishing how few appreciate the depth to which those concerned with the preparation of a definitive standard need to research, in order to establish the required level of excellence to meet the designers’ specification or production engineers’ planned method for manufacture.

The local buckling of structural sections composed of isotropic plate elements is well documented. It is the purpose of this paper to extend this work to include sections composed of orthotropic plates. It has been shown that the buckling behaviour of single orthotropic plates with certain boundary conditions can be related to that of an equivalent isotropic plate in terms of a single parameter involving the principal plate rigidities. It is proposed to investigate whether this principle may also be applied to the structural buckling problem.

It has been shown that simple approximations to the deflected form of buckled plates can be used to give fast and reasonably accurate results for the plate buckling problem using an energy method. If these simple deflection functions are used in an energy analysis for structural sections then large errors may be introduced.

The aerodynamics of aeronautics to most people is prob-ably synonymous with the aerodynamics of streamlined shapes. By contrast aerodynamics outside of aeronautics may well conjure up a picture of a non-uniform airstream approaching a building, creating an unsteady, separated flow. That these pictures are misleading would be known to most of those connected with aeronautics—aircraft do develop separated, unsteady flows, and outside of aero-nautics there is interest in aerodynamic efficiency and smooth attached flows. Until comparatively recently, however, the need in aeronautics has been to increase aerodynamic efficiency, and virtually all major research topics seem to have been related to steady, smooth flows; the problems connected with separated and unsteady flows (e.g. wing stall, or buffeting in bomb bays) have, by contrast, usually been tackled on an ad hocbasis, without very much emphasis being given to understanding whythe flow was as it was.

During the last 20 years flight simulation has become of increasing importance in commercial, military, and space applications because of the significant transfer of training experience to the actual flight task, and the economy in usage of equipments, personnel, and fuels. Simulation has also aided in the definition of man's capability to deal effectively with new and different flight control tasks especially in space flight. In the case of space flight no other means of astronaut training exists other than simulation for much of the mission, a fact that NASA recognised in the beginning of the space programme. As a result a major effort has been made to obtain the highest simulation fidelity possible to insure the safety of each 'one of a kind’ space mission carried out. Link has been actively involved in the US space programme since 1962 when it employed simulation techniques to aid in astronaut training for Gemini flights. Shortly thereafter Link built three command module simulators and two lunar module simulators in which Apollo astronauts trained for their successful moon missions. Subsequently Link was selected to build the simulator in which astronauts trained for the Skylab missions, and was awarded NASA contracts for an Orbiter aeroflight simulator and a Shuttle mission simulator. The Orbiter aeroflight simulator has been functional since 1976 and has been in continuous use in preparation for the recent orbiter aeroflight tests at Edwards AFB, CA. The Shuttle mission simulator has been in design and construction since April 1976, and is scheduled for a phased delivery beginning early in 1978. It represents a major milestone in mission simulators in terms of sophistication, completeness, and magnitude of systems simulated.

In recent years digital computer technology has been employed to produce visual images for use in the training of aircraft pilots by simulation. The technology employed is that of computer graphics which has been in use since the 1950s in a variety of man-machine systems. The rudiments of a basic computer graphics system are represented schematically in Fig. 1. They are a graphics computer and a human operator. The interaction proceeds as follows:

• (i) the computer produces a visual image;

• (ii) the operator sees the image;

• (iii) the operator generates a response which he sends to the computer;

• (iv) the computer in turn causes some change in the visual image.

The use of this closed loop communication may vary greatly from application-to-application but the principles are universal.

With the development over the last half decade of very highly manoeuverable aircraft, a new design question has arisen. This is, how do we as aircraft designers ensure that the future fighter pilot can function in an environment which pushes not only his mental but also his physiological limits to the utmost? The new generation of aircraft offers substantial increases in sustained turn rate and hence g levels. Furthermore a proliferation of controls and displays confront the pilot from which he has to collect, collate, integrate and interpret data which is not currently presented in anything like a logical manner with respect to his present flight phase.

This paper is an attempt to describe a systematic design approach to a cockpit for the future generation fighter aircraft. The paper will show the pilot's physiological limitations to high sustained g forces, the likely performance of a new generation fighter and the amount of g tolerance a pilot should find useful. Methods of providing this increased tolerance will be discussed. An analytical method of assessing aircraft information presentation requirements will also be shown which will enable information to be presented in a more logical manner.

British Caledonian is one of several British privately owned airlines that will be affected in some way or other by Bermuda 2. They will all be affected in different ways and will therefore have different views about the Agreement. This paper represents the views only of British Caledonian.

British Caledonian is the first airline to have taken up any wholly new opportunity offered by Bermuda 2 and has therefore been more affected more quickly by the Agreement than any other airline.

At the same time we have been strongly critical of Bermuda 2. We were opposed to the complete re-negotiation of the old Agreement although we did wish to see major changes, particularly to the route schedules. In general we think the results are disappointing. They fall far short of the British expectations on which the whole British decision to re-negotiate was based. In our view the new Agreement offers no solutions to the sort of problems that have afflicted most North Atlantic operations over a long period of time. Both the UK and the US now believe that many of the changes made to the route schedules could have been secured without renouncing the old Agreement.

The purpose of this paper is to compare air passenger transportation in North America with ground passenger transportation as it is today and as it will probably be in the next few years. A precise statistical comparison is practically impossible; air figures include both domestic and international travel, scheduled and non-scheduled; rail figures include inter-city traffic and commuting; bus and car figures are for inter-city traffic only. This choice was arbitrary and represents a trade-off between highlighting selected comparisons and strict consistency for its own sake.

With the increasing need for fuel economy all possible areas of drag reduction need investigating. One form which offers considerable promise is lift-dependent drag which for most transport aircraft is approximately 30% of the total drag in the cruise and more at lower speeds. A reduction in lift-dependent drag at a given flight speed would directly reduce the operating costs of existing aircraft. Even greater savings might be obtained for twin-engined airliners where the wing loading is fixed by the high lift-dependent drag at climb-out from the airfield. A method of increasing the effective aspect ratio of a wing would allow new aircraft of this type to have lower wing areas and weights in addition to higher cruise lift-drag ratios.

Aerodynamic designers of transport aircraft have been dreaming for decades of being able to use, for high speed design problems, some of the advanced computational tools that they now have available to them such as the three-dimensional transonic flow methods and three-dimensional finite-difference boundary-layer methods. It is anticipated by the designer and his management that the appropriate use of these new advanced computational methods on the wing design of the next subsonic transport aircraft configuration will typically result in an improved aerodynamic technology level, an improved aerodynamic efficiency for a given level of aerodynamic technology, and reduced design costs through a reduction in the amount of wind tunnel testing required and the resulting shortened time period required to define the final lines.

In reviewing industrial education, concentration has been given to the higher educational programmes; also to courses in manufacturing technology and production management which include topics normally within the responsibility of the Director of Manufacture, as outlined in Fig. 1.

There is a wide range of programmes offered in the above topics at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

For the undergraduate stream there are seventeen universities and polytechnics which offer first degree courses under a variety of titles such as: Production Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Manufacturing Systems Engineering, and some add Management to the titles as illustrated in Fig. 2.

Most universities and polytechnics have adopted the 4-year sandwich system as offering the most suitable blend of academic and industrial experience for graduates entering manufacturing industry. A very important part of the sandwich course is programming the industrial phase, and in recent years difficulties have been encountered in finding firms which are prepared to undertake this responsibility.

I should like to discuss six aspects of the White Paper which seem to me to be of significance. First, the demand forecasts. I suppose, from personal experience at least, it has to be said that no forecast will ever prove to survive reality; for as Peter Parker put it, the goalposts keep moving. So it is today, for the White Paper includes traffic growth assessments based on fare levels and conditions much as experienced during the past few years, but not reflecting the competitive race to reduce fares and to ease restrictions which we have seen in progress during the last few months. New lower readily accessible fare packages are now available on the Atlantic routes, and the trend will spread to other markets—indeed this is already beginning. There are similar pressures in the air cargo field, and the resulting upward movement in demand levels is already evident.

As the first international project of this kind, the German-Dutch Wind tunnel (DNW) is under construction in the Noordoostpolder, The Netherlands. The DNW will be among the largest and most extensive complete low speed wind tunnels in Europe. This project is based on previous specifications and design work for two former national projects (now abandoned) which were similar in size and performance and mutually complementary in view of the tasks. The DNW will contribute to filling the gap still existing in the field of aeronautical test facilities in Europe for effective aircraft development work.

The DNW will consist of a closed circuit tunnel (total length of centre line: 318 m) with three interchangeable atmospheric test sections with cross-sectional sizes of 9.5m x 9.5 m, 8 m x 6m and 6 m x 6 m; the maximum speed is about 60, 110 and 145 m/s respec-tively. In addition, an open jet configuration will be available with special features for aero-acoustic tests. The single-stage speed-controlled fan of 12 m diameter has a nominal drive power of 12.7 MW. The standard equipment will include an air exchange system and a heat exchanger in the circuit, a model sting support, a six-component balance, and a distributed computer system for data acquisition/reduction and control purposes.

In 1971 The Royal Aeronautical Society's Handley Page Air Safety Award funded a preliminary study of the complex aerodynamic phenomena associated with fully deployed parachutes and results were sufficiently encouraging for the Ministry of Defence to sponsor a full research programme in the hope that a more rational approach to canopy design might evolve.

Preliminary investigations revealed that the essentially quasi-static two dimensional concepts of conventional aerodynamics as applied to aircraft were of limited value since a parachute is very much a three dimensional device which has a tendency to undergo large oscillations at relatively low descent airspeeds. The project therefore involved rethinking of basic aerodynamic principles and a return to hydrodynamic theory as applied to airships since they also have pronounced three dimensional anatomical characteristics and experience significant changes in relative air flow in their natural mode of operation. The objective of this paper is therefore to show how this same theoretical approach can be used as a basis for developing computer techniques capable of effectively simulating full scale parachute descent behaviour from basic wind tunnel test data.

Previous attempts to analyse clamped skew plates by Galerkin's variational procedure have resulted in discrepancy occurring for rhombic plates. Iyenger and Srinivasan employed along both of the skew axis of the plates the characteristic displacement functions for the normal modes of vibration of a clamped-clamped beam. Their results compared well with those of other investigators but not with Kennedy which differed significantly from the others for rhombic plates.