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Mention golf and most people will think of Gleneagles. But, earlier this month, to over 100 visitors from 18 countries the name Gleneagles was associated with the Aerospace Industry.

Neville Birch Fire, following an aircraft accident, generates many life‐threatening hazards. Hitherto, it has been the tendency of research agencies to examine means of suppressing substantive problems when the key problem is the combination of a variety of potentially lethal factors. The survival time of passengers within a burning aircraft may be prolonged against smoke and toxic gases by, for example, the provision and use of smoke hoods, but if passengers are not protected against rapid temperature rise, the time bought by the first may be of no avail against the second. In this book, Neville Birch seeks to improve the effectiveness of facilities and equipment within the aircraft (or available to it) by the application of practical principles. The work first reviews the state of the art, identifying the factors affecting an aircraft evacuation, focusing on those factors which appear following the onset of fire viz. smoke, generation of toxic gases, heat and the very real risk of flashover. It then proposes, takes forward and to a degree unites specific measures which individually and collectively combat these hazards, all of which are possible in the near term and at relatively low cost.

Nuclear corrosion facts to be given at conference. Corrosion in the nuclear industry is just one of the many topics scheduled for discussion at UK CORROSION 87 — Europe's leading conference for the anti‐corrosion industry.

Introduction Visual inspection or observation at low magnification with an optical microscope has been of great help in analysing fracture surfaces. Optical microscopy, however, has distinct limitations, such as low resolution and small depth of field. The transmission electron microscope does not have these limitations.

This article surveys the literature dealing with theory and applications of life cycle costing (LCC). It deals with the literature published in the last 25 years and provides 667 references.

Friction stir welding (FSW) is simple, clean and cost effective joining technology which allows high‐quality joining of materials that have been traditionally troublesome to weld conventionally without distortion, cracks or voids such as high‐strength aluminium alloys. Since FSW has been identified as “key technology” for primary aerospace structures, the recent FAR regulations for damage tolerance and fatigue evaluations of aircraft structures require fatigue life predictions for this specific joint type also in the presence of corrosion. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the prediction of small coupon fatigue lives of thin section friction stir welded butt and T‐joints.

Particularly, as a special application, widespread fracture mechanics software will be used to predict the fatigue life of FSW joints and to obtain SN curves. The engineering approach will start from an easy definition of the damage affecting the fatigue life of any of the previously mentioned cases (inclusions, tool markings, corrosion pits) and will move through affordable fracture mechanics solutions. Particularly, a first step in predicting the fatigue life of complex friction stir welded structures will be taken by combining the FEM code with the fracture mechanics software in the prediction of the FSW T‐joints.

The calculations are in very good agreement with the experimental results once the following basic assumptions are done: the welded material is treated as base material; particle inclusions and welding imperfections are treated as initial flaws while predicting the life of polished and un‐polished (including the T‐joints) FSW material, respectively, and the entire fatigue life was comprised of crack propagation; pitting and inter‐granular corrosion are treated as a single corrosion damage source and the model surface crack comprehends this damage; and the several corrosion‐damaged areas of the specimen surface are simulated with a single semi elliptical surface crack having the dimensions of the deepest and the widest corrosion damage area.

A simple engineering approach which is based on a relatively solid background and which is checked against fatigue test data for various FSW test specimens was developed: it may provide a practical and reliable basis for the analysis of fatigue tests of integral structures in the presence of corrosion attack, by using widespread fracture mechanics principles.