Westland Dreadnought
The Westland Dreadnought was a passenger aircraft by the British company Westland Aircraft. The exceptional design of the aircraft was characterized by a very thick and deep wings, who passed over flowing into the fuselage.
Another protagonist of this design concept was in Germany, the Junkers with their aircraft G 38 In today's terminology, the concept can be described as blended wing body. The design is currently being studied by NASA in the experimental aircraft X -48 for its suitability in the civil and military aviation.
History
In 1917 we started at Westland Aircraft Works with the construction of an aircraft should be designed according to the plans of the exiled Russians Woyewodski. These provided an aerodynamically clean cantilever monoplane, whose wings great thickness should smoothly into the trunk. A particular interest was that they wanted to catch the German lead in the construction of cantilever monoplane all-metal aircraft. Especially the modern designs of Junkers and Rohrbach served as a model.
First performed in 1919, experiments in low-speed wind tunnel at the Royal Aircraft Establishment showed that while one could expect a high buoyancy, but this was coupled with a very high aerodynamic drag. Moreover, this interpretation was also assessed as particularly vulnerable coasting.
Nevertheless, the British Air Ministry invited the Company Bristol and the West country in a bid to make proposals for a full-scale machine. Westland was awarded the contract for a single-engine, eight -seater mail plane.
Construction
The tubular steel rack complex structure sechsholmige wing used and vertical pipe struts along with a cross- wire bracing executed. In order to solve the difficult practical problems with this unorthodox structure, specifically a mathematician has been set.
The cabin area was clad with aluminum, the rest of the fuselage and the wings, however, were covered with conventional canvas. The overall design of the hull form, as well as the adaptation of the profile used ( RAE T.64 ), was carried out by purely empirical point of view without any mathematical background. The difficult construction led to a construction of the machine over two years.
Use
The first flight of the machine on May 9, 1924 ended with an accident in which the pilot was seriously injured. The cause could not be determined and the further development of the machine has been set. However, it marked a milestone in the development of new design principles, at least in British aviation history. Not least because of the experience gained with it the wind tunnel tests was given a more prominent place in later designs, in England.