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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1123.PDF
Air-Cushion Vehicles FLIGHT International supplement, 25 April 1963 SOUTHAMPTON SYMPOSIUM A Significant Day for the Industry BY BRIAN PHILLIPS Part I SOME DAY some future historian is bound to write that by such and such a date the air-cushion vehicle had truly arrived. What date will be selected remains to be seen; but this correspon dent would lay a small wager that it could well be March 23,1963. Nothing dramatic happened on that day; there was no great technical break through (as far as is known); nor was any dramatic feat of navigation per formed on an air cushion. What did happen, however, was that upwards of 150 of the country's most forward- looking engineers chose to give up the first decent Saturday this year and closet themselves all day in darkened lecture rooms at Southampton Uni versity to hear themselves talk about the state of the industry at this time. Somehow there was a different atmo sphere about this gathering. When some theory or explanation was reported, heads nodded in agreement; not, one felt, from a wish to be polite or to appear "with it," but because the phenomenon described had been ob served in a number of places at different times on different craft. No longer were the ideas expressed open to ridicule. People were talking not about what might be, but about what was already in being and what was undoubtedly going to be. The industry, it seemed, was no longer in a state of uncertain hover. It was well and truly under way; the long slow climb to hump speed was almost over; and, with this final ob stacle nearly past, was poised to accel erate away—to who knows where? Hovernautics ? After the opening address by Profes sor Richards, whose department at the University is already called that of "Aeronautics and Astronautics," and which could very well now include the term Hovernautics, the symposium got under way with two simultaneous lectures, one by Mr A. J. Burgess of the University, on "Hovercraft Stab ility Research at the University of Southampton," and another by Dr H. J. Davies of the Department of Mechanics entitled "General Principles of the Hovercraft." This latter talk was attended by Mr Cockerell himself (refresher course?). Tony Burgess entered the hovercraft Mr A. J. Burgess (partly hidden) points out a detail of the two-dimensional rig described in his paper to some of those attending the symposium. The nozzle assembly can be seen at upper left through the transparent sideplate which extends downwards into a water seal contained by the sides of the tilting floor. This allows the floor to be tilted without loss of air from the cushion business via the aero department at Folland, and has now returned to the University to carry out fundamental research into air-cushion problems. He began by explaining why he thought research was required into this phenomenon, when there was already a wealth of published data. Mr Burgess considered that, despite considerable information already published on the subject, there was still room for a through investigation of the aerodyna mic phenomena involved. This, he said, was not surprising, for industrial research was naturally directed to the immediate needs of the hardware de signers and must of necessity exclude those phenomena which, whilst of academic interest, might not bear im mediately on practical design problems. He thought there were two aims in carrying out this work. First, to pro duce experimental results; and, second, to propose theories which adequately explained all the observations. Having chosen, for obvious reasons, to work in two dimensions, a model has been built which is broad relative to its length to minimize end effects; and, to control each jet independently, separate blowers have been incorporated. As it was difficult to include any variable jet geometry, it was necessary to keep this fixed, at least during the early stages of the work. It was, of course, important to have a theory to explain the results. The number of different parameters cap able of being varied would give rise to an absurdly large number of permu tations, and even if the time-consuming task of exploring these were undertaken, it would be impossible to reduce the data to a useful basis for design. A theory has therefore been developed which deals adequately with the first part of the experimental work and suf fices for the immediate future. Having thus justified the need for work, and the reasons for conducting it in the chosen way, the speaker went on to describe the experimental rig, which, although now structurally complete, is still having some of its systems deve loped. In the heading is a view of the apparatus described. There are three separate blowers, each capable of being independently controlled, feeding a pair of outer jets and a central stability slot. The floor is capable of being tilted to simulate the effect of the craft pitching or banking over horizontal 54
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