Material Specs

[stressmerchant]

I hope this is the right forum for this question.

I'm looking for the specifications of materials used in wartime American aircraft, such as the C-47. My documents list grades such as 24SO, 24 ST and so on. I have strength figures for these materials, and I have figures for the modern materials (eg 2024-T3), but I have no way of linking the types. To confuse things, even the 24SO seems to have different specs (AN-XX, QQ-xx, etc)

Is there a reference that gives equivalences between the early and later specs?

Thanks in advance

[Genghis the Engineer]

There's a British organisation called the "Aluminium Federation" (http://www.alfed.org.uk/xpor/home), who operate a helpline. One of the things that they do is keep references of equivalent modern alloy standards to just about every aluminium alloy spec ever used worldwide.

I've not subscribed to that service myself, since pretty much everything I've ever needed is available from their paperback "The Properties of Aluminium and its Alloys" (we just call it the "Aluminium Handbook"). But, I'm told by people who do that the information service subscription isn't all that expensive and is pretty much infallible. (That said, for £30 I'd buy the handbook first, it's pretty thorough on direct material equivalences.)

So, if you need absolutely correct equivalences for aircraft repair or build work, that's the way I'd go.

G

[Volume]

The QQ-xx specs are the civil version of the military AN-xx.