In providing the introductory speech to the section of this Symposium which deals with The Initiation of Projects, I have both the advantages and disadvantages of the opening batsman. My advantage is that I can set the scene in the manner which suits my purpose and this, I propose, quite unashamedly to do and beg the Chairman’s forgiveness if I overlap too much.

First I want to give you two quotations from recent presidential addresses to this Society and to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. I found them both peculiarly relevant to the issues we are met to discuss.

First, the Duke of Edinburgh in his recent Centenary Address to the Royal Aeronautical Society said, “Yet we all believe that it is ridiculous for a country which is supposed to be well advanced in engineering technology, to admit it cannot cope with aeronautics—the most advanced technology of them all.“

The paper outlines the existing procedures employed in the field of defence procurement and mentions some new ones which may be used in the near future. It will serve as a reminder of the way in which major aircraft and weapon and equipment projects are conducted and will lay the foundations for what is hoped will be a fruitful discussion.

Perhaps I should start as earlier speakers have done with a disclaimer to the effect that I am not putting my thoughts forward as those of an expert in all fields of management. I am perhaps fortunate in having been concerned with projects which lend themselves to experiments in the use of integrated management techniques, and also in the operation of a company which, because of its medium size—a thousand or so strong—and its type of business, is just large enough on one hand to justify a reasonably sophisticated approach to general management and, on the other, small enough for one to see the effects of changes in approach. It is on this basis that I shall make my comments.

The Aviation Group of the Ministry of Technology (formerly the Ministry of Aviation) is responsible for spending a large part of the country's defence budget, both in research and development on the one hand and production or procurement on the other. In addition, it has responsibilities in many non-defence fields, mainly, but not exclusively, in aerospace.

Few developments have been carried out entirely within the Ministry's own Establishments; almost all have required continuous co-operation between the Ministry and Industry. In the past the methods of management and collaboration and the relative responsibilities of the Ministry and Industry have varied with time, with the type of equipment to be developed, with the size of the development project and so on. But over the past ten years there has been a growing awareness of the need to put some system into the complex business of translating a requirement into a specification and a specification into a product within reasonable bounds of time and cost.

Management Education in the Air Corporations is based largely on the Air Transport Staff College, East Burnham. This was originally founded by BEA in 1960; BOAC had a similar establishment at Dormy House, Sunningdale, from March 1963. The two Corporations now share East Burnham on an alternate monthly basis. Up to 35 students can be accommodated.

During the past two years, there has been a sharp acceleration to the interest which industry has displayed in the subject of management education. This can be attributed to these factors: —

• (a) A more widespread realisation of the gap developing between the UK and a number of foreign economies, as manifested by diverging rates of the major economic indicators.

• (b) The attainment of top-management responsibilities by a younger generation of managers, many of whom had been given some earlier training and who were more conscious of its value than the incumbents of the job from earlier generations.

• (c) The publication of the Franks, Robbins and (in the aerospace industry) the Plowden reports.

• (d) The impact of the Industrial Training Boards making it manifest, in terms of serious levies, that training was an economic necessity and therefore must be investigated thoroughly.

Notwithstanding the widespread awakening of interest, it is very belated and sets numerous problems. The problems are in two areas—scale and quality.

Extensive use of reinforced plastics has contributed significantly to the success of small VTOL engines, notably the Rolls-Royce RB 162 series in whose compressors it has been possible to demonstrate their versatility and ruggedness. The choice of reinforced plastics for such obvious reasons as lightness, specific strength and corrosion resistance has been fully justified, while apparent deficiencies in stiffness and rain erosion resistance have not proved embarrassing.

Considerable use has been made of epoxy resin pre-impregnated sheet incorporating non-woven parallel aligned glass fibre, in particular the “Scotchply” series of “pre-pregs”. Exceptionally high fibre contents have been achieved, resulting in higher strengths and moduli than are usual with glass-reinforced plastics and furthermore, since Scotchply has proved so uniform in composition and ply thickness it has been possible to precision-mould most components with such accuracy that machining is eliminated—a major economic factor. Further economies have been achieved by minimising press curing times by the use of latent catalytic type hardeners for the resin systems which, in addition, confer long storage life and good heat resistance. The use of very thin sheet material has allowed much ply orientation within laminates, resulting in substantial and controllable variations in anisotropy, allowing properties to be tailored more nearly to meet the conditions imposed.

The bird hazard to aircraft at Auckland International Airport, Mangere, NZ (Lat 37° 00’ 30” S, Long 174° 47’ 30” E) is examined. Geographical features affecting the hazard are explained and the history of the hazard recounted, and the groups and component species of birds, their daily movement patterns and seasonal abundances discussed. The greatest potential danger is from the waders, but gulls are the greatest actual danger possibly because gulls live irregular, opportunistic lives in comparison with the strict, tide-governed existence of the waders. An analysis of the bird incident figures for a year tends to confirm this view, in spite of the comparative rarity of incidents.

Measures taken or projected against the birds are reviewed. Special reference is made to unorthodox methods—the provision of alternative high water roosting sites, experiments with a radio-controlled model simulating the hawk shape, and the use of gull corpses as scaring agents. While worthwhile reductions have been made to the hazard, continued work and constant vigilance is necessary.

Notations and nomenclature for aircraft dynamics and associated aerodynamic data have evolved over many years. Common usage broadly followed the ideas laid down by Bryan, Glauert, Bryant and Gates, and extensions eventually resulted in a conglomeration of symbols which generally impeded the efforts of students, teachers, and other workers and there was little scope for making further additions in a sensible way.

Much work has been done at the Royal Aircraft Establishment to rationalise the position, and the resulting scheme is presented in RAE Technical Report TR 66200. In this scheme changes are kept to the minimum possible, existing concepts are retained, and considerable care is taken to provide a flexible system which allows an author a great deal of freedom as regards simplifying the notation in particular investigations—by omitting suffixes, for example. The RAE is confident that the new notation and nomenclature will overcome the inadequacies of existing systems.

It is usual to consider equilibrium between the forces and accelerations associated with individual fluid elements when deriving thrust formulae containing momentum terms. Thermodynamic energy equations for open systems, however, only rely on the premise that, as far as energy is concerned, what goes into a system must either come out or else build up inside.

In thermodynamic textbooks a distinction is usually drawn between steady flow, involving no change of energy with time inside a system, and non-steady flow, which implies a rate of change of energy within the thermodynamic system under consideration.

It is interesting to find that the thrust formula for a simple system, as shown in Fig. 1, may be derived directly from these thermodynamic energy equations by two alternative methods.

When hovercraft were first introduced the lift or thrust augmentation ratio was often used as a measure of their effectiveness. Although this ratio has been used less with subsequent development, it continues to be quoted in some literature. It is defined as the ratio of the hovercraft lift to the lift that would be obtained if the curtain jet were used to produce direct lift by jet reaction. An analytical expression is determined in outline.

Analytical studies involving the pressure on inclined surfaces in hypersonic flow are made difficult by the lack of an explicit and simple relationship connecting the pressure p with the flow deflection angle 8. The various existing relationships are either too complicated or valid only over a very limited range.

A technique has been devised for measuring the concentration of “Polyox” in dilute aqueous solutions. “Poly-ox”* is one of those polymers whose addition to water in low concentrations causes a reduction in skin friction (if the Reynolds number is sufficiently high) in turbulent flow through a pipe or boundary layer. (See, for example, ref. 1.) The analytical method is probably applicable to other polymers having this property, and it should be generally useful in this field of research. For example, in any experiment in which a polymer solution is injected at a point in a boundary layer, the method could be used to determine the distribution of polymer concentration at downstream sections. It is based on polarography, a well-established tool of chemical analysis of which an excellent account is given in ref. 2.