The effects of flap deflection, configuration incidenceand leading edge bluntness on boundary layerseparation and transition have been studiedexperimentally. A quasi two-dimensional flat plateequipped with a full span trailing edge control flaphas been employed for these tests.

The studies have been carried out in a hypersonic guntunnel at M∞ = 8·2 and Re∞/cm= 9·0 × 104. The flap deflection anglesstudied were in the range 0° ≤ β ≤ 30°. Theincidence range was from zero to α = 10° (positive αis nose down). Leading edge bluntness effects weresimulated by the introduction of a hemi-cylindricalleading edge.

The flow structure was studied using high speedSchlieren photography as well as surface pressureand heat transfer measurements. Liquid crystals wereemployed to study the threedimensionality of theflow structure for selected configurations.Analytical theories have been developed to estimatethe flap pressure and heat transfer levels for thesharp and blunt configurations. These are comparedagainst experimental measurements.

Experiments are performed on the effects of a turbulentboundary layer on surface pressure and heattransfer, using a cylindrical model fitted with avariety of flares at Mach 5. The flow overcompression corners of up to 20° (below the expectedincipient separation value) is examined. Liquidcrystal thermography indicates an unexpected peak inheat flux close to the corner. It is suggested thatthis is due to a small scale separation occurringearlier, i.e. at smaller corner angles, thanpreviously observed. An estimate of the size of sucha separation bubble is made and it is suggested thatthis is a predominantly laminar phenomenon.

This paper describes a simple method to accuratelysimulate the flow field around a wing in surfaceeffect ship (Wises) model that involves the use of acontraction and a slot to suck the boundary layerfrom a flat plate. Theoretical aspects of the designare discussed with relation to the required level ofsuction and the slot width.

The effectiveness is ascertained from measurements ofthe boundary layer height on the plate throughmeasurement of the mean velocity profile and areduction in height of 50% was generally observedwhen suction was used.

Comparison of the forces on a low aspect-ratio wing,obtained from the proposed and the image method,verified the proposed method for wing heights above2·5% of the mean chord. At lower heights, separationof the boundary layer on the ground plate is thoughtto have altered the pressure distribution on thewing.

The paper uses the conventional nine-noded Lagrangianelement for studying transient linear responseanalysis of composite stiffened shells. An improvedversion of the stiffener modelling has been used inwhich the stiffener can be placed anywhere insidethe element. For the first time, concentric oreccentric stiffeners have been used for compositestiffened shells for solving the transient dynamicresponse of these structures. These are notavailable in existing commercial packages. Differenttypes of time dependent loading such as shortduration air-blast loading, suddenly applieduniformly distributed step loading and sinusoidallyharmonic loading have been considered in this paper.The results of stiffened composite cylindricalshells and doubly curved shells with differentboundary conditions and various laminateorientations have been presented for eccentricstiffeners. Parametric studies considering differentvariables have also been carried out.

The work reported here extends the work of Nikuradse onthe categorisation of surface roughness. Nikuradse’swork considered pipe flow, whilst in this paperboundary layer flow is investigated. Important andfundamental differences between these two types offlow are shown. An experiment upon turbulentboundary layers over sandpaper-type roughnessesenabled a fluid-mechanic categorisation of thesesurfaces to be obtained for this flow. This iscompared with some shape and size categorisations ofthe roughnesses from detailed measurements.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an approachwhich performs data fusion on the output ofmultiple, spatially separate, sensors engaged in thereal time tracking of obstacles in a helicopter'senvironment. The generated information can be usedeither as a flight director aid or as feedbackrequired by an automatic collision avoidance system.Obstacle track estimation has been commonly carriedout using the Kalman filter (KF) for linearestimation, or the extended Kalman filter (EKF) foruse on nonlinear problems. However, certainassumptions made in the derivation of the EKFalgorithms render it sub-optimal for aerial obstacletrack estimation. Additionally, the EKF has problemswith initialisation and divergence (stability) formany non-linear processes.

Research at the University of Southampton hashighlighted a link between fuzzy networks andassociative memory neural networks. This link isimportant as it allows new learning rules to bedeveloped for training fuzzy rules, and learningconvergence to be proved. This paper exploresmethods of fusion of estimates using neuro-fuzzymodels, and addresses some of the weakness of theKalman filter approximation introduced by theassumptions made in its derivation.

A theoretical study was undertaken to determine theeffect of taper ratio on the trailing vortexstructure of a high aspect ratio unswept wing. Thewing was modelled using lifting line theory, and thevortex was assumed to have a Rankine distribution ofcirculation. The results show that reducing thetaper ratio of the wing, decreases the maximumtangential velocity of the vortex as well as thevortex span while the core's diameter increases.Data is also presented showing the sensitivity ofinduced drag to wake vortex parameters.