It is indeed a privilege to be invited to address this Seventh European Pioneers’ Day conference here in Toulouse. It was suggested that I might say something on Research and Development, (R&D); in approaching this topic I have borne in mind the themes of previous Pioneers’ Day conferences and tried to embody at least something of the approach adopted by the Pioneer I have in mind. I refer to Mr C. C. Walker who, with Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, provided the technical foundation for the outstanding growth of the de Havilland Aircraft Company during the three decades of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. In this partnership Mr Walker’s penchant for engineering science blended effectively with Sir Geoffrey’s flair for design.

The College of Aeronautics performs an annual group design project as a major part of its Aircraft Design MSc programme. Projects are chosen to be representative of current areas of interest and the programme is carried out in a manner which is as close as possible.to that of aircraft manufacturers.

Vice Admiral Forrest S. Peterson, Commander Naval Air Systems Command, said at the AIAA/NASA-Ames V/STOL Conference in 1977 that:

V/STOL appeared to be the most effective, most economical means of addressing many of our major military needs: dispersal of air assets over a broad geographic range, reducing the present reliance on relatively few ships and large permanent bases and reducing the cost of maintaining an adequate, efficient air arm.

The technique of geometric programming is applied to the design of optimum aircraft wings in the multi-spar monolithic skin configuration. Both flat and corrugated web systems are considered and design examples are given based on contemporary wing data. The present report is confined to the consideration of minimum weight design of metallic structure and the constraints are those which arise naturally from consideration of allowable stress, buckling and in some instances geometric limitations on the layout. Most of the problems solved give rise to closed form solutions while more complex problems are readily solved by computer program.

An informal Working Party was set up in October 1980 to review the present state-of-the-art in turbulence modelling for aeronautical applications and to make recommendations for future progress in this field. The report assesses the extent to which further developments in design and prediction methods for both external and internal flow are dependent on achieving advances in turbulence modelling and considers how these improvements realistically could be obtained. Reference is made to the conclusions from an international symposium on the same topic held at Stanford University, California in 1980-81.