Structures Book

[jmuriarte]

Hello everybody:

Could you recommend me a good book of aircraft structures design?.
I am an Industrial designer and I would like to learn about this kind of structures.

Thank you very much.

 

[SWComposites]

Aircraft Structural Design, Michael C. Y. Niu

Synthesis of Subsonic Airplane Design, E. Torenbeek

 

[CoffinsCorner]

Analysis & Design of Flight Vehicle Structures (Bruhn) + Supplement (McComb).

 

[ferdo]

Hi,

See FAQ.

Regards
Fernando

 

[carney]

Analysis & Design of Flight Vehicle Structures by Bruhn is by far the most widely used Aircraft structures book. I have used it nearly every day in my stress engineers training.

 

[wheatshocker]

I've seen only positive reviews about this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Stress-Analysis-Design-Engineers/dp/0964701405

Has anyone read it? I was thinking about picking it up so that I might be able to make sense of my previous structures classes...

 

[mohr]

Hi !

Do not forget Peery book´s " Aicraft Structures "...
Cheers

 

[sigma38]

The four classics are Bruhn, Niu, Peery, and Flabel. From there you can branch out into the mechanical side with Roark, etc.

 

[jgarth]

Flabel's Practical Stress Analysis for Design Engineers is an excellent practical text, with many real-world examples. Roark's Formulas for Stress and Strain is also a very useful resource, containing all the raw beam and frame formulas you'll need to perform classical strength and deflection analysis.

 

[RPstress]

Flabel's book is good but basic stressing. More complicated topics are not covered.

Bruhn is good but can be confusing. Make sure to acquire one of the many indexes available.

For design sizing Niu's "Airframe Stress Analysis and Sizing" is currently the best (my opinion, of course).

For general structural design Niu's original "Aircraft Structural Design" is good.

For the basics "Understanding Aircraft Structures" by John Cutler is good and cheap.

 

[jmuriarte]

Thank you very much for the information . Perhaps its a stupid question but, any of these books treats detail design themes?

 

[CoffinsCorner]

For more specific data you might want to try to get a copy of some of the Structural Design Manuals issued by the different OEMs.

 

[TDI]

Practical Stress Analysis for Design Engineers is a very good book as an introduction to aircraft stress. I would recommend reading this before going on to Bruhn.

 

[RPstress]

Flabel's book has the most beautiful illustrations of detail design, albeit presented for analysis purposes. The examples used look like real structures. Niu's books have a fair amount of real detail design illustrations in them, from the many companies at which he has worked. Cutler's book has quite a lot of photographs of things like wing ribs and other big fittings in some detail. I'm not sure which one, but I'm pretty sure at least one of these references has a nice illustration of the different sort of shear clipping used to join fuselage longerons to frames at the frame cutouts that the longerons pass through. This illustration contrasted different approaches used on different aircraft.

Designing a good fitting or beam-like part in the real world is something of an art, and I'm not aware of any references which really address that level of detail. You have to take the many and contrasting requirements for strength, fatigue, damage tolerance, inspectability, repairability, environmental fitness (corrosion, SCC, appearance, surface prep), environmental suitability (no cad plate or CAA anymore), different costs, life, etc., and combine your addressing of them all in such a way as to produce a reasonably optimal part. This includes design of geometry, material selection, fastener usage, recurrng vs. fixed costs combined with the overall project policies, and so on. Producing a comprehensive list of the competing requirements for detail desgn is almost pointless, as they vary so much from structure to structure and project to project. The same goes for the different strategies and considerations when deciding how to meet the requirements and optimise the things that don't have simple targets (there may often be a weight target, but there's usually an incentive to save weight and cost always needs to be minimised; there are also competing aspects of some of these things, such as manufacturing cost versus life cycle or "true" cost).