Aircraft Structures for Engineering Students

This textbook on aircraft structures is aimed at undergraduate students of aeronautical engineering and covers the fundamentals of elasticity and aircraft structural analysis and the related topics of airworthiness and aeroelasticity. It covers basic elasticity, virtual work and energy methods, thin plate theory, structural instability, the vibration of structures, the principles of stressed skin construction from the perspectives of materials and structural components, airworthiness and airframe loads, and fatigue, including the prediction of aircraft fatigue life, as well as analysis of thin-walled beams subjected to bending, shear and torsional loads, the method of idealizing a structure into one more amenable to analysis, and stress analysis of aircraft components such as wing spars, fuselages, wings, fuselage frames, and wing ribs. It also details composite structures and the effects on the analysis of structural and loading discontinuities, and presents the design of a portion of the rear fuselage of a trainer/semi-aerobatic aircraft. This edition has new worked examples throughout, MATLAB examples and exercises, an aircraft design project case study illustrating application of the major techniques in the book, and more end-of-chapter exercises. Worked solutions and electronic images are available online. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)