Analysis and Design of Flight Vehicle Structures

While many of the methods in “Bruhn” have been overshadowed by Finite Element Analysis, they provide valuable insight into the fundamentals of aircraft design and an appreciation for the men and women that designed aircraft before John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry invented the electronic digital computer at Iowa State University. You won't find many aircraft stress analysts using the Moment Distribution (Hardy Cross) Method, Slope Deflection Method or the Methods of Elastic Weights, Dummy Unit-Loads, Moment Areas, Virtual Work or Influence Coefficients. While some of the methods are more than fifty years old, the lessons are timeless. This book is a compilation of the mistakes, omissions and typographical errors my teammates and I have discovered in the last two decades. Keep in mind that “Bruhn” was written before electronic calculators and spreadsheets were invented. Note the slide rule disclaimer on page A13.13, column 2: “The calculations in this example being done on a slide rule cannot provide exact checks.” The examples in “Bruhn” are condensed. The book could easily be expanded to fill a five volume set. I would organize it differently . but as Marge and Homer Simpson might say, "It's easy to criticize . and FUN TOO!"