FLIGHT VEHICLE DESIGN

Aircraft design is a vast and complicated subject. It starts with brainstorming new concepts and ideas and continues with design, analysis, optimization, and cost estimation. The area of aircraft design is not limited to aerospace engineers. Rather, it is an interdisciplinary field that involves experts in mechanical, electrical, and electronic engineering, as well as computer science, instrumentation, and civil engineering. The construction of an aircraft typically takes 15-20 years due to its size, number of components and the production team will consist of thousands of people, making it one of the world’s biggest project undertakings.

Aircraft design is not just about sketching and modelling of the aircraft. A successful aircraft designer needs to be well-versed with key fundamentals from the areas of structures, propulsion system, materials and control. A solid understanding in these disciplines would yield a more efficient result. The design process is not restricted to just modelling, sketching and layout preparation. It further involves detailed analysis and evaluation of all the designs.

This book is centred on the subject of conceptual design of aircraft. It focuses on a realistic concept layout of an aircraft and the steps involved are similar to that practised by a real aircraft manufacturer. The book covers all the fundamental steps involved and is presented in an easy-to-understand manner with examples for better understanding of the concepts. It would help to get a first-hand understanding on the real world functioning of an aircraft design firm and the challenges and limitations faced and how to overcome those. Although in modern practices softwares aid the designers and most of what is covered here is done by the computers, having a basic outline of the entire process would really help to build a strong foundation in the field of aircraft design and in profession as well.