Gato,

Actually the cross section of the carbon mast I quoted in my post is as good as identical to the superwing F16 mast crossection. Of course all comments about higher loadings, smaller wall thickness and such also hold for the F16 superwing.

I'm amazed at the shear stupidity of some people here. Did you guys honestly think that I hadn't checked for that ?

And Gato your comments on putting carbon on inside or outside of the mast is just misplaced. Failure of the mast is not because of the crossection failing but because the wall is buckling locally under compression loads and thus initiating a larger failure mode. Increasing local buckling resistance (double sandwhich construction) is therefor more important then the downsides of placing some carbon on the inside of the mast. If you are using 4 mm thick ply then you can just as well forget about the whole project altogether as the ply will already weight 8.5 kg on its own and won't do much in the way of strength and stiffness.

But I get the hint. I will scram off now and leave you guys to discovering these things yourself.

Who needs a qualified engineer anyway right ? I only went to "school" and learned nothing !


Bloody ignorants !

Wouter