Comdtinst M13020.1G APRIL 11 2011. — 113 p.IntroductionIt is tempting to title this book ‘Flights of Fancy’ as this captures the excitement and
expectations at the start of a new design project. The main objective of this book is
to try to convey this feeling to those who are starting to undertake aircraft conceptual
design work for the first time. This often takes place in an educational or industrial
training establishment. Too often, in academic studies, the curiosity and fascination of
project work is lost under a morass of mathematics, computer programming, analytical
methods, project management, time schedules and deadlines. This is a shame as there
are very few occasions in your professional life that you will have the chance to let your
imagination and creativity flow as freely as in these exercises. As students or young
engineers, it is advisable to make the most of such opportunities.
When university faculty or counsellors interview prospective students and ask why
they want to enter the aeronautics profession, the majority will mention that they want
to design aircraft or spacecraft. They often tell of having drawn pictures of aeroplanes
since early childhood and they imagine themselves, immediately after graduation, pro
ducing drawings for the next generation of aircraft. During their first years in the
university, these young men and women are often less than satisfied with their basic
courses in science, mathematics, and engineering as they long to ‘design’ something.
When they finally reach the all-important aircraft design course, for which they have
yearned for so long, they are often surprised. They find that the process of design
requires far more than sketching a pretty picture of their dream aircraft and entering
the performance specifications into some all-purpose computer program which will
print out a final design report.
Design is a systematic process. It not only draws upon all of the student’s previous
engineering instruction in structures, aerodynamics, propulsion, control and other
subjects, but also, often for the first time, requires that these individual academic
subjects be applied to a problem concurrently. Students find that the best aerodynamic
solution is not equated to the best structural solution to a problem. Compromises
must be made. They must deal with conflicting constraints imposed on their design
by control requirements and propulsion needs. They may also have to deal with real
world political, environmental, ethical, and human factors. In the end, they find they
must also do practical things like making sure that their ideal wing will pass through
the hangar door!
