Saturday, August 1, 2015

Book Review: Modern Combat Aircraft Design

Klaus Huenecke
Modern Combat Aircraft Design
Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1987
Category: Aerospace Engineering

Rating: 4-Stars


Huenecke's volume provides an illustrated guide to many of the basic principals of high performance aircraft design.  Concepts ranging from wing sections, to transonic aerodynamics, to the basics of stability and control, and even an introduction to engine inlet aerodynamics and the principals of turbomachinery operation are all covered.

This book will not provide the level of detail or mathematics necessary to actually perform a design calculation.  The text is not aimed at the engineer, or even the engineering student that might want to perform real conceptual design trades or perhaps a back-of-the-envelope calculation to verify expected trends and trade-offs.  That was not what this book was intended for.

What you will find here, are lavish illustrations for the basics behind aircraft design, and text that is aimed at delivering the concepts in layman's terms.  Huenecke's aim was to present a text that was "comprehensible and selected in such a way that little previous knowledge is required."  To that end he has succeeded, making his book a worthy addition to any aviation library.

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