Originally Posted by CliveL
but I'm damned if I can remember what the bathtubs were!
Oops, I've done it again, forgetting that other people are also reading this thread, who wouldn't have a clue what we are talking about...
OK all.
On the 'blunties' and most other aircraft (subsonic or supersonic) there is a fuselage, and there is a wing.
The wing is connected to the fuselage by only a few very big bolts, linking a few very big forgings.
Concorde is different, right? Right.
Fuselage and inner wing are the same structure, and there were no "big bolts" that allowed you to separate fuselage and inner wing once the aircraft was built.
The only separate "bits" were the outer wings, the parts just outside the engine nacelles.
So 'rib 12' was the rib where the inner wing ended, and where the outer wing (built by Dassault, rather than Aerospatiale, actually) was attached.
Rib 12 actually was two halves, the one at the outboard side of the inner wing, and the one on the inboard side of the outer wing.
Both machined numerically from single 'blanks'...
And no, these two halves were NOT just bolted together with a few massive bolts. They were bolted together with
hundreds of bolts in all. I
did say Concorde was different, no?
Words now fail me, and I'll have to find or scribble some drawings ASAP.
In brief, so far.. each half of rib 12 had MANY machined "bath tub shaped" slots allowing to insert a bolt between the two halves, and bolt the outer wings to the inner wings.
And simplistically, the 'bath tub covers' were just small sheet panels held in place with fasteners fitted inside the 'bath tub' slots.
I should know.... I still have the scars of helping, one day, to refit a batch of them on Delta Golf at Brooklands
CJ