Aircraft

[Carruthers]

The Development of Hiduminium‐RR.58 Aluminium Alloy: The background to the choice of the main structural material for Concorde

Several years before the British and French Governments decided, separately, to initiate feasibility studies into the building of a supersonic transport passenger‐carrying aircraft with an aluminium alloy as the main structural material, the Research and Development Division of High Duty Alloys Ltd. began to compare the relative merits of selected Hiduminium alloys in anticipation of this possible new application.

It was appreciated that the life requirement, for ecenomic reasons, would be between 20,000 and 30,000 hours and that the saturation skin temperature, due to kinetic heating, at speeds of Mach 2·2 and 2·5 would be about 120° and 150°C, respectively.

The Division's considerable experience in the field of developing aluminium alloys for acro‐gas turbine applications for service at temperatures higher than this range, made us optimistic about the possibility of being able to develop a wrought aluminium alloy which would meet all the mechanical property requirements for the construction of a SST aircraft.

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The above was published in 1969, the company having been absorbed into the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Co by 1965.

A check of the Companies House website shows the existence of 'High Duty Alloys Ltd' in its own right, but it now appears to be in the financial sector and is described as an 'Intermediate investment holding company'.