Conceptual Aircraft Design

Preface

This new book is a natural follow up, retaining some DNA, of the book titled Aircraft Design (ISBN‐10: 0521885167 and ISBN‐13: 978‐0521885164) by Ajoy Kumar Kundu, published by Cambridge University Press in April 2010. This new book is a collaborative effort by the original author with his colleagues Professor Mark A. Price of Queens University Belfast (QUB) and Mr. David Riordan of Bombardier Aerospace‐Belfast.

Aircraft design fundamentals have remained virtually unchanged over most of the last two decades. Therefore, some amount of material from the first author's earlier publication is retained in this book. Based on the feedback, this new book takes the opportunity for a complete update and overhaul, by eliminating the deficiencies of the earlier edition, adding better clarification, incorporating improved diagrams in all chapters, and moving forwards with additional treatises, for example, on issues with aircraft performance monitoring, electric aircraft, future aircraft configuration and structural matters, which are included in an introductory manner. The benefits of using semi‐empirical methods are explained in Section 1.14. CFD, as a design tool, has advanced to the point where it can be considered a ‘digital wind tunnel’, almost replacing the older practices of using datasheets as explained in Chapter 23. Electric aircraft design is dealt in Chapter 24. We have omitted vertical takeoff and landing/short takeoff and landing (VTOL/STOL), as well as helicopters: ...