FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1955
1955 - 1697.PDF
816 FLIGHT, 25 November 1955 C.A.I.-I.A.S. JOINT MEETING American and Canadian Delegates Hear Inaugural Rupert Turnbull Lecture SOME 350 delegates attended the second annual joint meetingof the Canadian Aeronautical Institute and the Institute ofthe Aeronautical Sciences which took place in Ottawa on November 3rd and 4th. Nine technical papers were presented,and the conference included also a visit to Canada's National Aeronautical Establishment; presentation of the first W. RupertTurnbull Memorial Lecture; and the annual dinner, at which Mr. C. D. Howe, Canadian Minister of Trade and Commerce,was guest of honour. "Aircraft Structures" was the subject of the three paperspresented on the morning of November 3rd; Unique Structural Problems in Supersonic Aircraft Design by F. P. Mitchell (AvroAircraft), Experiment and Theory in Investigating the Behaviour of Structures at High Temperatures by Dr. N. J. Hoff (BrooklynPolytechnic Institute), and Optimum Structural Design of Wing Box Beams by S. Bernstein (Canadair). The chairman of thissession was Mr. B. J. Kaganov, chief structures engineer of Canadair. During the afternoon, Mr. J. H. Parkin, director of theNational Aeronautical Establishment, gave the inaugural Turn- bull Lecture. Speaking on W. Rupert Turnbull, 1870-1954,Mr. Parkin reviewed the pioneering work of the noted Canadian aeronautical engineer from the technical and historical view-points. The late Mr, Turnbull constructed a wind tunnel and began experiments on aircraft wing shapes in 1902. Sub-sequently turning his attention to airscrew theory, he won the Royal Aeronautical Society's Bronze Medal in 1911; anddeveloped an electrically controlled variable-pitch airscrew which was successfully flight-tested in 1927. The chairman ofthe Turnbull Lecture was Mr. T. E. Stephenson, director of the aircraft branch of the Department of Defence Production,Ottawa. The annual dinner, on the evening of November 3rd, wasattended by over 700 members and guests. Mr. R. D. Rich- mond, president of the Canadian Aeronautical Institute, intro-duced Mr. C. D. Howe, who gave some reminiscences of the development of Trans Canada Airlines and Canadian PacificAirlines. On Friday, November 4th, two morning sessions were held.At one of these, materials and processes were discussed, the papers being Aluminium Alloys for Elevated-temperature Ser-vice, by E. H. Dix, Jr. (Aluminium Company of America); The Metal Bonding of Assemblies for the Canadair CL-28 MaritimeReconnaissance Airplane, by J. J. Waller (Canadair); and Materials and Fabrication Techniques for Structural Heat-resistant Plastic Sandwiches, by N. E. Wahl (Cornell Aero- nautical Laboratory). Mr. H. L. Eberts, president of FleetManufacturing, Fort Erie, was the chairman for this discussion. The subjects of the other session, of which Mr. I. A. Gray(director of engineering and maintenance, Canadian Pacific Air- lines) was chairman, were "Design for Aircraft Safety," and"Aircraft Accident Investigation." The three lectures given were Significant Problems in Air Safety, by Jerome Lederer(Flight Safety Foundation and Cornell-Guggenheim Aviation Safety Center); Aircraft Accident Investigation Techniques, byG/C, R, C, Davis (R.C.A.F.); and Recent Results of N.A.C.A. Crash-fire Research with Jet Airplanes, by I. I. Pinkel (N.A.C.A.Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory). During the afternoon of November 4th, delegates were takenon a tour of the laboratories devoted to research in structures, high-speed aerodynamics, gas dynamics and engines at theNational Aeronautical Establishment in Ottawa. They also visited the hydraulic and ships laboratory of the NationalResearch Council. HELICOPTER STATIONS DISCUSSED IAST week we published abstracts from a paper, The Design ofJ Helicopter Operating Sites, given before the Helicopter Asso- ciation on November 11th. The lecturer was Mr. H. T. Hough,M.I.C.E., M.I.Mun.E., City Engineer and Surveyor of the City of Liverpool. A discussion followed the paper, and points fromit are given below. The chairman, Dr. G. S. Hislop, thanked the lecturer forgiving "such an excellent paper" and mentioned that in the large audience there were officials from many of Britain's impor-tant cities including Edinburgh, Plymouth, Torquay, Derby, Nottingham, Bristol and London. Representatives from Rotter-dam and Diisseldorf were also present. He opened the discussion by reading a written contribution from M. VERNIEUWE (Sabena), who agreed with the lecturer that it wouldbe most helpful if some official pronouncement on heliport requirements and sizes could be made; but that already the I.A.T.A. helicopterworking group had made numerous definite statements in relation to these matters and these represented the views of all the present heli-copter operators. In one section of their report, for example, it had been laid down that a landing strip measuring 400ft x 200ft would beof sufficient size, and the dimensions of the area required for parking a helicopter should be 1.25 times the rotor diameter. He thought thatrefuelling from static, flush-fitting hydrants was preferable to the use of mobile equipment. MR. G. STALIBRASS (M.T.C.A.) then made a long contribution inwhich he said that, speaking personally, he was not convinced that the helicopter would automatically become a successful vehicle for inter-citytransportation. It would need much development, spurred on by con- siderable enthusiasm on the part of rotating-wing protagonists, to makeit so. He thought that cities could not be pioneers in the provision of landing sites and, at the same time, expect official guidance to be forth-coming to remove the element of chance in the construction of landing grounds. He suggested that local authorities should decide for them-selves. They might start by providing sites which would be suitable for the operation of helicopters having only single-engine performance, inthe knowledge that when multi-engined machines were available their improved performance would allow building restrictions in the vicinityof the station to be relaxed. On the question of noise, M.T.C.A. had had more complaints arisingfrom helicopters' climb-away than from any other flight condition; he thought, therefore, that manufacturers should aim at providing a reallysteep angle of climb in transport helicopters. Climbing into any cloud that was present (assuming instrument flying requirements could be met)would reduce noise. He did not think the helicopter would do much to relieve surface-traffic congestion. MR. J. TILLEMA (Deputy-General, Rotterdam Town PlanningAuthority) said that the paper was worthy of study by other town- planning authorities because the future of the helicopter depended toa large extent on how the heliport question was solved. With a traffic frequency of three flights per day on the Rotterdam-Brussels service theyhad never had any complaints regarding noise. He felt it was, perhaps, more important that manufacturers should first seek to reduce noiseinside the cabin. He preferred the use of landing aprons connected by taxiways, as at Rotterdam heliport, to the lecturer's proposal of twolanding strips; and he also suggested that all terminal buildings should be built with the thought that they were only provisional. Until heli-copter services were fully developed, the type and extent of accommoda- tion required for passenger handling could not be determined accurately.With improved helicopter performance in the coming years, he did not think the use of ground-level stations would necessarily sterilize adjacentland in city centres. Nevertheless, roof-top sites did have certain advantages in some cases. HERR L. G. S. PRANG (a Diisseldorf architect) considered that roof-top-sites were more suited to the requirements of a large city. The con- structional problems were not so difficult as had been assumed and animpact load of 3g to 4g could easily be supported. He thought that town-planning officers should show more initiative as so much time hadalready been lost. MR. R. H. WHITBY (B.E.A.) referred to the problem of the effect ofrotor downwash on adjacent streets and produced a diagram which illus- trated the results of tests made earlier with Bristol 171 and WestlandWhirlwind helicopters. At the edge of a circle of just over 100ft radius, an airstream of 10 kt could be felt from these machines. With a large40,000 lb helicopter, it had been calculated that the same airstream would be felt at a distance of approximately 300ft. MR. RAOUL HAFNER (Bristol Aeroplane Co.) agreed with many of thelecturer's points but said it was uneconomical to build a twin-engined helicopter capable of hovering on one engine. The twin-engined machineshould have en route single-engine performance and the backward take- off technique should be used to meet safety requirements at city-centrestations. He suggested a means whereby local authorities could plan for helicopters while not committing themselves to too great a capital outlay.An L-shaped building should be provided initially to allow for two small strips on the roof at right angles measuring 300ft x 100ft. This wouldbe adequate at the outset and when helicopter traffic increased the other two sides of the square could be completed, thus doubling the landingand take-off facilities. DR. G. S. HISLOP (Fairey Aviation), the chairman, said he felt therewould ultimately be a design requirement for all transport helicopters to be capable of continuing a climb after partial power failure. MR. HOUGH, in reply to the discussion, thanked the contributors forthe points they had made. He agreed that the helicopter would not solve the traffic problem completely, but he thought it would certainlyrelieve it. He was glad that Sabena had received no complaints regarding noise and was hopeful that this factor might safely be left to be dealtwith by the manufacturers, and therefore ignored by local authorities when choosing a suitable site. He thought most of the building restric-tion and siting problems would disappear if the industry could design and produce a helicopter capable of climbing vertically to 200-300ft aftertake-off, with adequate safety factors.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
