Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #239005 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 143 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780972239707
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

About the Author
Daniel P. Rayner, Ph.D.

Customer Reviews

Good overview of how to start...
This book provides an excellent introduction to the conceptual design process (sizing and performance estimates) for the homebuilder. It's a bit wordy in places, and some examples are not entirely relevant to the average builder (who, besides the author and Burt Rutan, wants to build an asymmetrical design?). But it was the lack of any detail on load factors or structural analysis that prevented me from giving it 5 stars. If you want to understand the basics of how to size a wing, or calculate stall speed, then this book is an excellent choice.

Excellent first book for wannabe homebuilt aircraft designers
Most aircraft design texts are university textbooks or industry references, and out of hundreds of pages you might find a few dozen that are helpful for the amateur experimental aircraft designer/homebuilder. This book, however, wastes not a single page. After the obligatory "don't blame me if you kill yourself" intro (would sloppy designer/builders read a book like this anyway?), the book gets right down to business.

The first four chapters cover the most important question: "Why?" Why do you want to design an airplane? The answer determines the aircraft configuration, size, wing loading, fuel capacity, etc., and all these items and more are discussed.

Once that's sorted out, Chapter 5 begins the "How", starting with how to actually loft (draw) the overall airplane shape. This chapter has one of the most detailed and useful descriptions of conic and flat-wrap lofting I've seen in any design reference.

Chapter 6 is only a few pages long, discussing crashworthiness and flutter prevention. Important stuff, but basically punted to other references.

In Chapter 7 you analyze your drawing, calculate the basic aerodynamic coefficients and do a preliminary structural design and weight analysis. I commend the author for a halfway-decent overview of structural design--most of the aerodynamically-oriented texts seem to be afraid to touch this topic at all. Chapter 8 continues with range and performance calculations, and finally Chapter 9, titled "Let's Make It Better", covers the inevitable design reiteration when the analysis results indicate that your "How" and your "Why" are miles apart.

Finally, there is a brief but great appendix with useful tables and graphs, such as the weight and horsepower of most of the engines commonly seen on homebuilts and the weight and density of common homebuilt aircraft materials and components.

The foreword by Peter Garrison really summarizes this book nicely: an airplane designer needs to gather a disparate amount of material from a large number of different sources, and this book helps organize that task, and with a particular emphasis on the small planes of interest to the homebuilder.

Hint to this author or others: what I haven't found *anywhere* is a good structures text oriented toward small aircraft design. "Stress Without Tears" isn't bad, but a marriage of Bruhn with Nui's composites book, with a focus on small GA planes, would fill a *huge* hole for amateur designers. To really impress me, include examples of using open source CFD and FEA programs to assist the design effort :-)

Make This The One Book You Start With
As an amateur backyard builder attempting to design and build an airplane, I actually got much more out of "Simplified Aircraft Design For Homebuilders" than any of the other aircraft design books, including some extremely expensive volumes that are regularly advertised.

This book is well-written, covering the subject of aircraft design on a basic level that is easily grasped by the average homebuilder/non engineer. It's also gleefully sprinkled with a dash of humor, much like a "design book for Dummies". Dan Raymer goes to great lengths to include the finer details of aircraft design that are so illusive and so very time-consuming and difficult for the amateur to research. This book will actually save you months of frustration and research. It's all here in this one little book.