A number of new aircraft design books have been published recently. However, If you are just starting out, I still suggest reading Stinton’s book, The Anatomy of the Airplane, first, followed by Whitford’s book, Design for Air Combat, and then Raymer’s book. Then I would re-read Stinton’s. I’ve listed the recent books for now, and will add comments in the near future. Because “design” means different things to different people, these books are all different and emphasize different aspects of design. You really can’t compare them against each other.
Egbert Torenbeek, Advanced Aircraft Design, John Wiley & Sons, 2013. Although rumored to be an update of Prof. Torenbeek's previous well-known design text, this is an entirely new book. It is a contemporary discussion of aircraft design, including key topics of current interest. The subtitle - Conceptual Design, Analysis and Optimization of Subsonic Civil Airplanes is a good description. Consult his previous book for an encyclopedic collection of formulas. While this book contains plenty of analysis, the book concentrates on the key issues of current interest and how to address them to understand how to develop a new design. Read the Amazon entry for more details. This is another really good book by the Professor.
Grant E. Carichner and Leland M. Nicolai, Fundamentals Of Aircraft and Airship Design Volume 2 - Airship Design and Case Studies, AIAA Education Series, Reston, VA, 2013. This is a very large volume that logically could have been split in half. The Airship Design portion of the book provides a detailed description of the process for airships, hybrid airships and balloons. The second half of the book contains nine case studies covering a wide range of aircraft. The case studies include the Lockheed Blackbirds, the X-35, The Boeing 777, the HondaJet, a Hybrid Aircraft, the Daedalus human powered airplane, the Cessna 172 Skyhawk, the T-46A and a Foot-Launched Glider. The case studies are by a variety of authors. If you are only interested in a portion of the topics it might be best to borrow the book from the library. If you have broad interests it is worthy addition to your library. I'm not aware of another current design book for airships. The entire book is well done. The quality of the AIAA books has improved. Finally, the presentation level is appropriate for typical senior classes.
Ajoy Kumar Kundu, Aircraft Design, Cambridge University Press, 2010. This is a more modern approach to education texts, with an overview in each chapter of “what is to be learned”. It primarily focuses on commercial transports. It is a nice, well balanced treatment, but is light on sizing and constraint diagrams, and possibly structural concepts. It does have some coverage of aircraft systems, and manufacturing as well as cost. Overall a nice treatment. I wish it included more sizing (T/W and W/S).
Thomas C. Corke, Design of Aircraft, Pearson Education, Inc., Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, 2003. This is a reasonable book, although it includes the weights details in the stability and control chapter, and something is amiss in that he shows a case where the minimum trimmed drag for a canard arises for a positive static margin, which is opposite my experience.
Denis Howe, Aircraft Conceptual Design Synthesis, Professional Engineering Publishing Limited, London, 2000. This book comes with a floppy disk containing several Excel spreadsheets. This book is very good. It has a methodology for stability and control included as an appendix. One problem is that formulas are often "thrown in" without explanation or reference. My experience with students is that this leads to a "plug and chug" mentality, which is to be discouraged.
Roger D. Schaufele, The Elements of Aircraft Preliminary Design, ARIES Publications, Santa Ana, CA, 2000. Order directly: 866-780-0067. Schaufele is highly experienced, and for transport aircraft is an excellent description of the process. He was at Douglas Aircraft for many, many years, and was directly involved in the DC-8, -9 and -10, as well as the C-17, MD-11 and T-45. The book reflects his years of experience.
Ray Whitford, Fundamentals of Fighter Design, Airlife, England, 2000. Whitford's earlier book covered the flight sciences aspects of airplane design superbly. This book has a much broader range, covering all aspects of fighter design, including avionics, systems, armament and tactics, etc. Thus it doesn't have the coverage of flight sciences included in his previous book. So it's good to have both. Each chapter is a mini-history of the evolution of the particular topic, and thus is very good for students. The book evolved from a series of articles in Air International. One problem I had was that the Air International articles were in color, while the book is mainly black and white, and the graphics aren't as effective.
Lloyd Jenkinson, Paul Simpkin and Darren Rhodes, Civil Jet Aircraft Design, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999. This book is very good. It’s really civil transport design. They start out with a good overview of the entire design environment, including economics, noise and pollution. They do a good job of covering the fuselage layout and related issues, before moving to the wing layout and weight and balance. After covering lift and drag, they go into performance and sizing. This book is the best available for sizing requirements and use of carpet plots. They have a web site with civil aircraft and engine data. For civil jet transports, this is
John Fielding, Introduction to Aircraft Design, Cambridge University Press, 1999. This book contains lots of information on aircraft systems that normally aren't covered in aircraft design texts. He has chapters with the title starting with "under the skin" that include the informaiton. It is almost in the preliminary design category. He also has a lot of design information inluded as appendices.
L.M. Nicolai, Fundamentals of Aircraft Design, METS, Inc., 6520 Kingsland Court, San Jose, CA, 95120, 1975. For me this is the reference I use the most. A lot of information and not too many words. It still covers the essential issues as well as any aircraft design book.
Egbert Torenbeek, Synthesis of Subsonic Airplane Design, Kluwer Academic Press,1982. An excellent text. A rationale for making each decision required in design is included. An encyclopedic list of references is also included. This book contains an incredible amount of design data.
Darrol Stinton, The Anatomy of the Airplane, BSP Professional Books, Oxford, 1985. Deceptively basic, this is well worth reading for extra insight on many aspects of the airplane you already think you know. Once again, do not underestimate the value of this book. Originally developed to instruct flight test pilots. A second edition will be coming out in the near future.
Ray Whitford, Design for Air Combat, Janes, London, 1987. A very good book. The title does not suggest the thorough coverage of the basis for use of various features on designs. He describes the pros and cons for each possible aircraft arrangement.
Michael C.Y. Niu, Airframe Structural Design, Conmilit Press, LTD, Hong Kong, 1988, 2nd Ed., 1999. Available through ADASO/ADASTRA Engineering Center, P.O. Box 3552, Granada Hills, CA, 91394, Fax: (888) 735-8859. This is the book for deciding on structural concepts in conceptual design. The author worked for Lockheed. It also has an index to cutaway drawings in various magazines.
Jan Roskam, Airplane Design, published by DARcorporation, 1440 Wkarusa Drive, Suite 500, Lawrence, KS, 66049, Phone: 1-800-DAR-7144, (785) 832-0434, fax: (785) 832-0524. This is the definitive collection of design information. A truly monumental work. Roskam also provides a step-by-step procedure, with examples, of how to use the information to develop a new design. Much of the material has been incorporated in software packages sold by DARCorp.
Klaus Huenecke, Modern Combat Aircraft Design, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1987. A beautifully done book with technical substance.
Daniel P. Raymer, Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach, 4th Ed., AIAA, Reston, 2006. The newest addition contnues a trend of refinement, so that this book is now a true classic reference. It has a lengthy yet very good verbal description of the various aspects of aircraft design. Peter Garrison recommended it as "the one book to have" recently in his Flying magazine column. It gives the view of each contributing discipline from the point of view of the designer. This is valuable because it's the only modern aircraft design book written by an actual aircraft designer. (See this page to get the pdf file for help on the Kirschbaum’s steps to take in laying out a drawing). He has some companion software for PCs, RDS-Student: Software for Aircraft Design, Sizing and Performance. The software includes a CAD package as well as analysis tools. Sizing studies must be carried out indirectly, which is a good thing.
Laurence K. Loftin, Jr., Subsonic Aircraft: Evolution and Matching of Size to Performance, NASA RP 1060, August 1980. This book evolved from an in-house course at NASA Langley. It is divided into jet and prop aircraft. Each section contains a chapter describing the development of the technology and its relation to the configuration evolution. Then a chapter is presented on the method of sizing the aircraft, and finally, a chapter with examples is presented. The book is especially good in describing the various constraints, and presents many correlations of the performance of various aircraft. Typical engine characteristics are also presented. A pdf file is available on the NASA Technical Report Server.
Ed Heinemann, Rosario Rausa, and Kermit Van Every, Aircraft Design, Nautical and Aviation Publishing Co., Baltimore, 1985. This is another book that is deceptively basic. Although it appears too simple, it covers the essential elements of conceptual design by one of the true masters. Van Every was Heinemann's chief of aerodynamics for many years.
Darrol Stinton, The Design of the Airplane, van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1983 (reissued in paperback by BSP Professional Books). This text covers the design of light aircraft and provides examples. It is chock full of useful tidbits of information.
Darrol Stinton, Flying Qualities and Flight Testing of the Airplane, AIAA, Washington, 1996. This is a book full of lessons learned describing desirable features of aircraft, and the problems that can arise. As in all of Stinton's books, the emphasis is on descriptions of the physics in a way that can be easily understood. His journal article on design and flying qualities of flying boats is included as an appendix. Although most aircraft projects start off based on performance requirements, my experience was that most of the effort turned out to revolve around achieving decent flying qualities.
Malcolm Abzug and Eugene Larrabee, Airplane Stability and Control, A History of the Technologies That Made Aviation Possible, Cambridge Aerospace Series, 1997. This book is mistitled, and should be called configuration aerodynamics. It is full of lessons learned from the history of airplane design, concentrating on the stability and control aspects of flight, which dominate the effort to produce a successful design. It is in large part a US counterpart of Stinton's book described above. It appears to be very accurate describing the early days (which I've only read about!), but doesn't quite capture the flavor of the story of relaxed static stability which emerged in the 70s and 80s and which I was around. Among my quibbles, it doesn't emphasize the issue of establishing the high angle of attack nose down pitching moment requirement as a key consideration in establishing the aft cg limit for augmented airplanes. Nevertheless, this book is in the must read category. A second edition, which I haven't seen, is now available.
D. Kuchemann, The Aerodynamic Design of Aircraft, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1978. A classic book for description of basic flow concepts applied to various configuration concepts.
David B. Thurston, Design for Flying, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1978. This book covers general aviation aircraft and also design of amphibians. A second edition has been published in 1995 by Tab Books, a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill. It is a major revision.
David B. Thurston, Design for Safety, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1980. This book provides an analysis of general aviation accident data and a list of considerations to produce aircraft that are much safer than current general aviation designs. Read this book when developing a general aviation concept.
Edward P. Warner, Airplane Design: Performance, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1936. Still valuable reading today, although possibly for historical perspective rather than current practice. An excellent discussion of airfoil aerodynamics.
W. F. Hilton, High-Speed Aerodynamics, Longmans, Green and Co., New York, 1951. This is a very good book for a physical description of compressible flow phenomena and its connection to aircraft design. A particularly good description of transonic flow phenomena encountered in the 1940s. A natural extension to Warner's book. It is dated, but has good physical descriptions of transonic flow phenomena.
W.T. Gunston, ed., Flight Handbook, Iliffe Books Ltd., London, 1962. Published by Flight Magazine. This handbook provides an excellent overview of most aspects of aircraft design. It contains an incredible amount of information for a nominally "non-technical" book.
K.D. Wood, Aerospace Vehicle Design, Vol. I, Aircraft Design, 3rd Ed., Johnson Publishing, Boulder, CO, 1968. Famous for funny preface.
Gerald Corning, Supersonic and Subsonic Airplane Design, 1960 ed., published by the author. (There was one more edition, with a title change to include V/STOL. I do not have a copy of that book.)
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direct comments and suggestions to W.H. Mason, whmason@vt.edu