Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Leonard, Robert W..
The state of the design art for inflated structures applicable to reentry vehicles is discussed. Included are material properties, calculations of buckling and collapse loads, and calculations of deflections and vibration frequencies. A new theory for the analysis of inflated plates is presented and compared with experiment.
Williams type modal solutions of the elementary and Timoshenko beam equations are presented for the response of several uniform beams to a general applied load. Example computations are shown for a free-free beam subject to various concentrated loads at its center. Discussion includes factors influencing the convergence of modal solutions and factors to be considered in a choice of beam theory. Results obtained by two numerical procedures, the traveling-wave method and Houbolt's method, are also presented and discussed.