The Stabilisation of a Thin Sheet by a Continuous Supporting Medium

Abstract

The structural problems of metal aircraft design largely centre round the difficulty of making efficient compression members. This difficulty is accentuated when loads are small in relation to the size of the structure. For example, the diameter of an aeroplane fuselage cannot usually be less than the height of a man, which results in such small forces at the surface of the shell that the lightest practicable beam is quite disproportionate to its strength.As a measure of load in relation to size, it is convenient to use a quantity that we suggest may be called the “ structure loading.” This quantity, due to H. Wagner (8), is simply the square root of the applied load divided by a characteristic dimension (such as the length) of the member.