Deflection and Stress Analysis of Thin Solid Wings of Arbitrary Plan Form with Particular Reference to Delta Wings

The structural analysis of arbitrary solid cantilever wings by small-deflection thin-plate theory is reduced to the solution of linear ordinary differential equations by the assumption that the chordwise deflections at any spanwise station may be expressed in the form of a power series in which the coefficients are functions of the spanwise coordinate. If the series is limited to the first two and three terms (that is, if linear and parabolic chordwise deflections, respectively, are assumed), the differential equations for the coefficients are solved exactly for uniformly loaded solid delta wings of constant thickness ratio. For cases for which exact solutions to the differential equations cannot be obtained, a numerical procedure is derived. Experimental deflection and stress data for constant-thickness delta-plate specimens of 45 degree and 60 degree sweep are presented and are found to compare favorably with the present theory.