Geodesic airframe

A geodesic (or geodetic) airframe is a type of construction for the airframes of aircraft developed by British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis in the 1930s. It makes use of a space frame formed from a spirally crossing basket-weave of load-bearing members. The principle is that two geodesic arcs can be drawn to intersect on a curving surface (the fuselage) in a manner that the torsional load on each cancels out that on the other.

The "diagonal rider" structural element was used by Joshua Humphreys in the first US Navy sail frigates in 1794. Diagonal riders are viewable in the interior hull structure of the preserved USS Constitution on display in Boston Harbor. The structure was a pioneering example of placing "non-orthogonal" structural components within an otherwise conventional structure for its time. As the "diagonal riders" were included in these American naval vessels' construction to reduce the problem of hogging in the ship's hull, and did not make up the bulk of the vessel's structure, they do not constitute a completely "geodetic" space frame.

Calling any diagonal wood brace (as used on gates, buildings, ships or other structures with cantilevered or diagonal loads) an example of geodesic design is a misnomer. In a geodetic structure, the strength and structural integrity, and indeed the shape, come from the diagonal "braces" - the structure does not need the "bits in between" for part of its strength (implicit in the name space frame) as does a more conventional wooden structure.

The earliest-known use of a geodesic airframe design for any aircraft was for the pre-World War I Schütte-Lanz SL1 rigid airship's envelope structure of 1911, with the airship capable of up to a 38.3 km/h (23.8 mph) top airspeed.

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