[xxxxquote=Mike Bracknell] Trust me, i'm definitely just here for the ride (so to speak) and quickly defer to you and the others who definitely know! Mike Bracknell[xxxx/quote]
Hell Mike, I meant I should leave it for others who definitely know, not you!
[xxxxquote]A little p.s. from me - having looked at Clive's diagram on this page showing the bathtubs, aren't the strengtheners the oval cups outboard of the main fixings on the page? with one pointed to by the words "Bottom machined skin panel"?
This looks like it's another layer of shear in order to fulfil the brief of working around the reported skin problems in that area. Just strange it had to break the surface like that? [xxxx/quote]
I don't think so Mike, there are far too many of them. It looks more like 'pocketing' of the machined skin to reduce weight; and incidentally that SA overdid it, since there were clearly cracks developing along the spanwise joints between the various wing sections.
Incidentally, doesn't that picture show ever so clearly why designing and fitting that postGonesse Kevlar liner to the lower skins was such a difficult job!
[xxxxquote=ChristiaanJ]If so, they are indeed shown in the structural repair manual and listed as 'doublers'. There are ten of those, from spar 62 to spar 71.
Reading "between the lines", the modification dates from about 1978, and was applied by successive service bulletins to both the BA and AF aircraft. [xxxx/quote]
Yes, I agree, they look like skin doublers put on as a repair job, and that makes (to me) a lot more sense than additions to increase outer wing stiffness. What has confused me from the beginning was that I equated "outer wing stiffness" with "outer wing torsional stiffness" because I could see why somebody might want to increase that but I couldn't, and can't, see why anyone would want to increase outer wing bending stiffness - if you get a little more dihedral who cares? But additional material to increase or recover fatigue life is another matter altogether.
Why external? Just look at that drawing - where could you add additional bending material easily?
[xxxxquote=Landroger]Digital control is a hell of a lot easier than Analogue - in my humble opinion.[xxxx/quote]
Depends when you were born Roger. Now if you came into this world before WW2 ......
[xxxxquote=Mr Vortex]I'm was wondering that, according to the manual and some document said that the vortex lift start to form on wing tip first. Why's that happened? Why not the root of the wing first?
Is it cause by the local wing tip vortex push the air causing more upwash
and hence more effective AoA causing it to reach the stall AoA first is that right?
Also, does the wing vortex on the Concorde has an influence or the effect on
the rudder? [xxxx/quote]
Ah! this gets a little complicated. Every lifting wing generates a pair of vortices at the tip, but these are not the vortices most people associate with Concorde. The massive vortices you see when the air is moist and the water vapour condenses out because of the drop in air pressure inside the vortex start, as you suggest at the wing root from that highly swept leading edge. The wingtip vortices are still there, even when the main vortices are doing their stuff, so Concorde actually has two sets of vortices acting on the upper surface, although this is not obvious to the casual observer.
Simply, the wing vortex has no effect on the rudder.
But whilst I am writing about vortices, can I digress to talk about the 'moustaches' aka GT6. Somebody, I forget who, asked about their use for controlling longitudinal stability and somebody else replied, quite correctly, that they were a contribution to lateral stability. What was happening without them was that high AoA (by which I mean in excess of about 10~12 degrees) the 'crossflow' on the front fuselage generated a pair of small vortices which, in sideslip, wandered across the base of the fin. This gave some sidewash that cancelled the 'incidence' coming from the sideslip itself so that the bottom of the fin was effectively operating at zero slip and therefore zero lift. Result - the weathercock stability dropped to virtually zero for small sideslip angles. The small vortex generators (Generator Turbillon or GT) had the effect of fixing the location of the origin of the forebody vortices so that they didn't wander - in fact they tended to become entrained into the main wing vortices - problem solved.
Now if I can sort it out I will try to upload some pretty pictures showing those two sets of wing vortices.
CliveL