Well, its that time in my schooling where I need to get a senior design idea. Originally I was going to do some work on my design (the XS1) but now it looks like it will be structural analysis of the Great Lakes. Its pretty important for my employer for a variety of reasons suffice to say, but I have encountered some missing and frankly odd bits in the old analysis from '73 done by Herb Rawdon (designer of the Travel Air Mystery Ship).

He uses this mysterious "Great Lakes Engineering Report #4" which seems to have been lost with time. Then he refers to a Vdes speed which is a V-speed I have never heard of. To top it off, he keeps referring to a "(0%) M.S." M.S. being Margin of Safety. What a 0% MS is supposed to mean is beyond me other than no margin of safety which just does not make a lick of sense...in short, working on old plane designs stirs up a whole new set of issues!


Any ideas what those things mean?

Hi Adam... :)

Here is an interesting Link....

http://81.70.242.211/eab1/manual/Magazine/AIAA%20Journal%20of%20Aircraft/1992/2/Integrated%20aeroelastic%20control%20optimization%20of%20laminated%20composite%20lifting%20surfaces.pdf

Not sure if that is of any help or not... :)

Flying Trucker wrote on Sep 14^th, 2012 at 7:14am:

Hi Adam... :) Here is an interesting Link.... http://81.70.242.211/eab1/manual/Magazine/AIAA%20Journal%20of%20Aircraft/1992/2/Integrated%20aeroelastic%20control%20optimization%20of%20laminated%20composite%20lifting%20surfaces.pdf Not sure if that is of any help or not... :)

Doug, I cannot load it for some reason. It keeps killing my browser regardless of which one I am using. Is there another way to view it? Maybe another site or something?
If it is a document you can email it too me. PM me and Ill send you my student email address.

Will have another look at it Adam and see what I can do... ;)

HMMM....now I am having problems getting it Adam...will try another search for you later... ;)

We are off to a fly-in at a local bugsmasher field again... :)

Hi Adam... :)

I typed in "vdes speed aircraft" and found several Links there that might help.

I can't access it any other way right now but will try a few other searches when we get home...

Cheers...Doug

Adam,

Try right-click>Save Target As....

I was able to download the pdf though the speed is very slow, <3.0KB/sec. Maybe your browsers are timing out??

Dave

dave3cu wrote on Sep 17^th, 2012 at 10:05am:

Adam, Try right-click>Save Target As.... I was able to download the pdf though the speed is very slow, <3.0KB/sec. Maybe your browsers are timing out?? Dave

I was able to just click it today  :o

Well at any rate, it mentions Vdes is 'design control speed'. Later on it puts in an airspeed for it, however that does not make sense as the value given in the report is 11.5mph. There are v-speeds that refer to the minimum speed the flight controls become effective although today they are not called 'Vdes'. So I am going to assume for now that this 'Vdes' is/was another way to refer to the minimum speed for flight controls to work.