Aircraft Structures for Engineering Students, Sixth Edition

Book Preface

The publication of a sixth edition has enabled me to review some of the topics included in the fifth edition and to provide additional worked-out examples and end-of-chapter exercises of a more practical nature than previously. It has also given me the opportunity to carefully examine the text and correct the printing errors which had, unfortunately, crept into the fifth edition.

The layout of the book remains the same as that in the fifth edition with the first seven chapters remaining unchanged. In Chapter 8 on structural instability of columns, I have included an additional example and an additional end-of-chapter exercise illustrating the application of the reduced modulus theory, while in Chapter 9 the work on the stability of thin-walled columns has been extended to the determination of average failure stresses.

In Chapter 21 on the stress analysis of wing spars and box beams, I have illustrated the effects of sweep in a wing which, of course, is particularly relevant to modern high-speed jet aircraft. I have revised the theory presented in Chapter 23 for the determination of stresses in fuselage panels containing cut-outs and provided an illustrative practical example together with an end-ofchapter exercise.

The major modification in the sixth edition is the extension of the work on composite materials and structures presented in Chapter 25. In the fifth edition, the theory was restricted to single-ply laminates; this has now been extended to a consideration of multi-ply laminates. In this, the method of specifying different ply lay-ups is presented together with the effects of symmetry and reinforcement orientation. The calculation of the equivalent elastic constants of a laminate is presented for the case of in-plane loading only since this is normally the situation in the thin skins of aircraft structures. The calculation of the distribution of stresses across the thickness of a laminate is illustrated by an example and the strength of laminates investigated using the maximum stress theory. Several additional examples are included as well as end-of-chapter exercises. Finally, in Chapter 26, I have included a practical example on the effect of shear lag on the loads in a wing panel containing a cut-out for an undercarriage bay.

T.H.G. Megson