Università Roma Tre

The Aircraft Structures course is part of the activities of the Construction and Aerospace Structures (ING-IND/04 SSD).

The teaching program is structured to provide students with knowledge and skills in the structural design of aeronautical components, using methods widely used in the aircraft conceptual and preliminary design phases.

The teaching program is divided into 36 lectures (equal to 9 CFU) divided into the following four main sections:

Introduction to aircraft design and semi-monocoque structures: loads acting on aircraft, regulations for aircraft design, box-wing concept, fuselage structure, and landing gear. Review of aeronautical materials and failure criteria of fragile and ductile materials. Structural design criteria: safe life, fail-safe, and damage tolerance.

Stress and strain analysis on beams: a review of bidirectional bending, torsion, and shear of open and closed thin-walled beams. Torsion and shear in multicell thin-walled beams.

Structural analysis of semi-monocoque structures: beam theory for torsion and shear of multicell thin-walled beams, stiffened and tapered. Structural idealization. The fuselage and box-wing stress and strain analysis. Cut-outs in wings and fuselages. Joints and connections.

Introduction to structural instability: buckling of beams (Euler's critical load); buckling on aeronautical structures.

- T.H.G. Megson, Aircraft Structures for Engineering Students, Arnold, London, 1999 (for all the contents of the syllabus)

- Lecture notes by the teacher (for all the contents of the syllabus)

The educational material used by the teacher from time to time is indicated during lectures. The lecture notes are available on the Moodle platform to facilitate their use for attending and non-attending students. On the same platform, are also made available the specifications of the project the students have to perform during the year, as well as a collection of written tests of previous exams, to provide students with a valid and realistic test bench for the final exam.