The 855th Lecture to be given before the Royal Aeronautical Society, “ Fuel Systems for Turbine-Engined Aircraft ” by Mr. J. E. Walker, A.F.R.Ae.S., was read under the auspices of the Luton Branch of the Society on the 24th April 1952 at Luton.

The influence exerted by the technical development of a vehicle on the design of the surface on which it travels is of considerable historical and social importance. Technical progress in the design of the road vehicle has never been matched by a similar development of the road, and in the past 50 years the discrepancy between the performance of the vehicle as dictated by road conditions, and the performance of which it is capable has been even more marked. The policy, forced upon society by national and international conditions, of compelling the vehicle to conform to the present standards of road design is highly restrictive and uneconomic, and such devices as pedestrian crossings, traffic lights and speed limits, are all evidences of failure to solve the problems of the simultaneous development of vehicle and road.

An investigation into the preparation of Data Sheets based on the work of Kuhn and Griffith at the N.A.C.A., revealed that it might be possible to present non-dimensional curves for the ultimate shear strength of aluminium alloy webs in incomplete diagonal tension, in a form similar to that of Structures Data Sheet 02.03.13, which are independent of material specifications. The values of “basic allowable shear stress” are founded on flat plate details from early experimental work and on estimated values for fully developed diagonal tension. Later work by Ross Levin provided further test results extending the range of diagonal tension developed, and the application of these to thick webs has been confirmed.