The Layout, Design and Construction of Aerodromes and Airports

The CHAIRMAY (Dr. Oscar Faber, O.B.E., M.Inst.C.E., Vice-president), who regarded the paper as one of the most interesting ever presented to the Institution, proposed a hearty vote of thanks to the author for the extraordinarily interesting collection of photographs he had shown, as well as for the paper itself, and for the admirable way in which he had presented it.

It may be stated in a general way that, for a given nature of sand and a given quality of cement agglutinant the strength of the resulting concrete increases when its compactness increases. The lack of compactness may be due in part to bad granulometry, which is a question into which it is not proposed to enter specifically in this paper; assuming that the best granulometric composition of the inert, component has been attained, lack of compactness may still be due to the fact that full advantage is not taken of the possibilities presented by the composition of the mixture, that air cavities remain in the concrete, either through the presence of mechanically enclosed air bubbles, or through the gradual evaporation of superfluous water. T.J. Gueritte

Revolutionary changes in structural design are so rare that particular interest attaches to occasional reports, principally from foreign countries, describing the manufacture in light aluminium alloys of structures which would normally be of steel. Clearly the choice of material is not dictated by some irresponsible whim, but by economic considerations, or other equally strong justification. For many years, the use of aluminium alloys has been standard practice for certain special types of structures, e.g., aircraft, and if proof were necessary of the suitability of aluminium alloys for withstanding stress, fatigue, corrosion, and other factors looked for in a structural material, it would be found in the behaviour of the delicate, complicated girderwork of a rigid airship, or the less intricate but equally elegant structure forming the fuselage and wings of an aeroplane. For such structures, however, the paramount importance of the stress-weight ratio reduces to a secondary consideration those questions of comparative cost which in general engineering are so important. The fact that the cost of duralumin may be 2s. 6d. per lb., whereas structural steel costs less than 2d., is of less importance than the fact that l-lb. of duralumin in the form of a bar of any given length will support nearly three times the load carried by l-lb. of structural steel of the same length. E.T. Painton