Section Editor: Glyn Davies

This section addresses the nature and role of aircraft structures. As appropriate for a handbook of this size, it avoids going into too much detail when the reader may have a broader interest in any of the topics in the other 17 sections. The aim is to help the reader understand the problems, the solutions, and the importance of getting the structure right. This latter point may seem obvious; i.e., the structure has to be safe for all likely loadings and for the operating life of the aircraft. However the safety should not be achieved in an overdesigned structure which is too heavy. A typical dry structure weight for a large civil aircraft can be 40% of the total all-up weight, when the payload may be only 20%. Every kilogram of structure overweight sacrifices 2 kg of payload. Or, to put it another way, if the structure is 10% too conservative (4% of all-up weight) the payload is down by 20%, and this can mean the difference between profit and loss for competitive routes.

The cost of the structure and its manufacture is clearly important, but so are the cost and duration of design and production. A revolution has taken place in the field of virtual everything (electronic mock-up, aerodynamics simulation, testing, systems, virtual manufacturing....the list is endless). We will therefore discuss what can be simulated in structural performance and testing and how it is done with modern software tools. We will also demonstrate some very...