Modern developments in materials, and the possibilities they offer in present and future engineering, make up a subject on which there has been no shortage of publications in recent years. It would not be possible, in a single article, to review the likely future developments in all the materials of interest to aeronautics; in any case some detailed references have already been made to this subject in other articles, notably that by Molyneux (July JOURNAL) on structural engineering. The point of view adopted here is rather more long-ranging, and certainly more speculative. A separate specialist contribution is being provided on polymeric materials in a later paper in this series and these are not, therefore, examined in any detail here.

This Title “Air Photography” covers a tremendous subject. In fact, so big that I am not going to attempt to deal with more than one aspect of it, and even that will have to be severely pruned.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has yet written the history, but it is certain that picture taking took place long before I came on to the stage. Balloon-to-balloon, airship-to-airship and ‘plane-to-’plane. Wherever there was the promise of a picture, you would find a man with a camera.

Those were really the days of the true pioneers, not only of flying, but of photography itself, because that science was in its infancy, and the exponents of it were few and far between.

This paper deals with the problem of operating a large fleet of transport aircraft and managing the problems that arise from mechanical and avionic defects in the machines.

We, in BEA, for a long time made the common mistake of treating this mainly as a technical problem, requiring for its solution a thorough analysis of defect sources followed by engineering modification action. After pursuing this course for a number of years it became apparent that, although results were achieved, more important influences were nullifying the benefits. A wider analysis of the problem was, therefore, undertaken which made it clear that the primary problem was the management of ground operations at the London hub of BEA's system. At this point the effort of the three operating departments (Flight Operations, Engineering and Traffic) converged and had to be effectively integrated.

The engine parameters which most obviously must improve to contribute to the continued lowering of aircraft Direct Operating Costs are those of prices, weight, volume and fuel consumption. These affect the base-line performance characteristics of the aircraft and in any formula for estimating Direct Operating Costs they will appear in the general cost of flying a load of passengers or freight from A to B.

Although difficulties had been experienced for many years in preparing initial estimates for major defence development projects and in the control of subsequent expenditure, they did not become a matter of serious concern until the second half of the 1950's. Then, at a time when the Government was seeking to stabilise defence expenditure, a series of cases came to light where final costs were, or seemed likely to be, substantially higher than the estimates at which they were first approved. Some of these projects attracted the attention of the Public Accounts Committee and led to considerable public criticism.

During his presentation Air Cdre. Tyndall told you that the foundations of the procedures recommended by the Downey Committee were laid down in the late 1950's and early 1960's. May I remind you of the Internal Directive of March 1960 he mentioned which stated that cost control must be accorded equal importance with technical control. All of us have been developing our techniques of programming and monitoring technical achievements over the years, but at the time the investigations of current practice were being made for the Downey Committee in 1964-65 it was found that in twelve projects investigated only one contractor had procedures for monitoring and controlling cost progress adequately integrated with those for monitoring and control of technical achievement.

I intend to speak briefly on three aspects of Project Management in the amplification of what Mr. Williamson has just said. Members of the audience who have attended lectures at this Society and elsewhere before, will, I am sure, recognise some of the Figures and I should not like it to be thought that I am presenting new or original ideas.

Turning to the control cycle that we at Hunting Engineering Ltd have been using now for a number of years, let me say that we believe that projects lasting two years or more need to be reviewed and re-cast, if necessary, at least every month. We have, therefore, evolved a four week management cycle and Figs. 1-5 explain our modus operandi. Programme re-casting is done at what we call the Management Decisions Meeting (Fig. 1). This takes place at the second week of the four week cycle. The efficacy of management decisions is tested by network re-running on the computer during the third week of the cycle, and on the assumption that the decisions meet the projects target date requirement the PERT time predictions resulting from these re-runs are issued during week three.

The Chairman said that the main object of the Symposium was to present the various facets of technological education as they exist today and as they seem likely to develop, having regard to those factors which were likely to influence technological education in the foreseeable future.

Inevitably there would be some bias towards the training of men and women for the aeronautical industry but this should not adversely affect the value of the discussions, for much of what applied to the aeronautical industry applied equally well to other engineering concerns.

It is by now well established that the computational analysis of significant problems in structural and continuum mechanics by the matrix displacement method often requires elements of higher sophistication than used in the past. This refers, in particular, to regions of steep stress gradients, which are frequently associated with marked changes in geometry, involving rapid variations of the radius of curvature. The philosophy underlying the idealisation of such configurations into finite elements was discussed in broad terms in ref. 1. It was emphasised that the so successful, constant strain, two-dimensional TRIM 3 and three-dimensional TET 4 elements do not, in general, prove the best choice. For this reason elements with a linear variation of strain like TRIM 6 and TET 10 were originally evolved and followed up with the quadratic strain elements TRIM 15, TRIA 4 (two-dimensional) and TET 20, TEA 8 (three-dimensional) of ref. 2. However, all these elements are characterised by straight edges and necessitate a polygonisation or polyhedrisation in the idealisation process. This may not be critical in many problems, but is sometimes of doubtful validity in the immediate neighbourhood of a curved boundary, where stress concentrations are most pronounced. To overcome this difficulty with a significant (local) increase of elements does not always yield the most economical and technically satisfactory solution. Moreover, there arises another inevitable shortcoming when dealing with TRIM and TET elements with a linear or quadratic variation of strain. Indeed, while TRIM 3 and TET 4 elements permit a very elegant extension into the realm of large displacements, this is not possible for the higher order TRIM and TET elements. This is simply due to the fact that TRIM 3 and TET 4 elements, by virtue of their specification, always remain straight under any magnitude of strain, but this is not so for the triangular and tetrahedron elements of higher sophistication.