Some possibilities for composite light aircraft construction

The College of Aeronautics has a considerable interest in composite materials, and in their application in particular to aerospace vehicles, over a number of years, and during this time we have conducted several research programmes on these types of materials. During recent years, an area of research which has attracted our interest is in the application of composite materials to light aircraft, forming part of a more general study of light aircraft which has resulted in our constructing and testing aircraft in this category on two occasions in recent years. Some of the work on these programmes has been conducted by students at Cranfield studying for higher degrees, and I acknowledge my indebtedness to them for some of the results presented in this paper.