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Bolted steel tubed fuselage?

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Mac790

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2008
Messages
1,525
Location
Poznan, Poland
I've seen many bolted/riveted aluminum fuselages, and it doesn't surprised me at all. Everybody with a little knowledge about alloys, knows why it's better/easier to bolt aluminum fuselage rather than try to weld it.

But I was doing a little bit research about steel fuselages, and I found a Hawker Hurricane steel fuselage, it's bolted fuselage (pic1,2), I said ok I can understand it, this plane took off (if I remember correctly) for the first time in 1935, but I was a little bit surprised when I saw a Hawker Tempest fuselage pic3,4. The front section is build from steel tubes, the rear section is aluminum monocoque, of course the front steel tubed section is bolted again.

Probably they decided to use this method because they were familiar with it (they designed Hurricane a couple of years earlier), but I'm still surprised about it, there were other planes with steel fuselages like Yak's family but those planes had welded fuselages.

I was thinking about a potential advantages of this method, simpler manufacturing (questionable), easier maintenance (maybe), no problem with alloy changing properties? (I don't know proper English term for it) due to the heat/welding.

Any opinions about it?

Seb
 

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