old, not bold,
With all due deference to you scientists, all I know is that the speed-induced temperature rise was enough to stretch the Concorde by, as I remember it, 10 inches (25.3 or so cm?) at M2.
10 inches is 25.4cm. And thank goodness al the rest behind the .4 is zeros.
If that hadn't been the case I doubt we could ever have gotten all the French and British bits to mate....
I was always amazed that the designers predicted it correctly, so that all the wires and pipes and stuff had the right amount of slack.
Well, there are an awful lot of expansion joints and other tricks of the trade.
I've never quite understood how the skin stretched with the frame, but no doubt someone can help with that.
Since you live in the UK, come down to Brooklands Museum in Weybridge sometime, and have a look at the fuselage section inside Delta-Golf that has been left "bare".
Lengthwise the skin IS the frame, the skin panels are machined from solid blocks, so when heated they expand uniformly.
Think of a beer can, or rather a tuna can in view of the proportions.
Top and bottom rim are the transverse frames which give the fuselage its shape and stiffness.
The wall is the skin, stiff enough so you can't crush it.
Now heat your tuna can. It just expands a bit in length and a little bit in diameter. No problem.
Same as Concorde.
And while everybody knows about 'spamcans', I don't think anybody has yet compared Concorde to a batch of tuna cans put end to end.
So I'm getting my tin hat and my coat, and I'm off for Christmas dinner.
Best wishes to everybody.
Christian