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When I contacted Lancair and told them that I wanted to
remove the ES-P pressure bulkhead from behind the rear seats and fabricate a new
one at a station aft of the baggage area they pondered the situation, ran some
calculations, and suggested (demanded might be more exact) that additional
graphite plys be carried all the way into the tail cone. This had the dual
effect of making the fuselage tube stiffer and more capable of taking the
pressurization and also making the empennage stronger. I went one step
further and added an "obi" of graphite unidirectional in a band all the way
around the fuselage at the location where the pressure bulkhead was
removed.
I have not tested this new design to failure
;-) but it seems to work just fine. Cabin distortion during
pressurization is similar to the IV-P, I see no ill effects of the extra
stiffness in the tail cone, and I kinda like the extra insurance. If the
tail is stronger does that mean the weak link is somewhere else?
Probably - and I hope never to find out.
Robert M. Simon
ES-P N301ES
. . . I lost the original question on
this, but someone asked about the wisdom of adding stiffness to the fuselage and
whether that would make it more likely to break. . . .
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