Aircraft Performance & Design

Rating:
Summary: A better historical than analytical textbook.
Review: Any student who has read through this textbook and tried to understand the derivations and derive the equations presented will realize that Anderson's forte is history more than engineering. The text is well written and interesting to read since Anderson gives a good historical background to each concept but Anderson's explanations are sometimes questionable and there are many conceptual and formula errors. The book does have good figures and presents a lot of good data but for students trying to learn aircraft performance for the first time, there are better textbooks out there. I am currently a PhD student in Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech studying for the qualifying exam. I was studying from this textbook but found that it was difficult to master the concepts to my professor's expectations based on what Anderson has presented. I recently aquired "Mechanics of Flight" by Warren Phillips which is much better at presenting the same material and is much more exhaustively researched from an analytical point of view. It is also much cheaper with twice the content so I would recommend it over Anderson's "Aircraft Performance and Design."

Rating:
Summary: A great introduction to aircraft design
Review: This is an excellent book and can be used as a continuation of Introduction to Flight by the same author. This book focuses on airplane design and performance, but also gives a very clear introduction to propulsion and aerodynamics of airplanes. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in airplane design, as well as Daniel Raymer's book Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach. Both books I found to be extremely interesting and written in clear, easy to understand language.

This book was used in an upper level Aircraft Performance and Dynamics class that I recently took. I also found this book very helpful in my Aircraft Design class and my Aircraft Propulsion class. In short, a student of aeronautical engineering couldn't ask for a more well rounded book on aircraft design--covering all the aforementioned topics.

If only all engineering textbooks were so well written!

Rating:
Summary: This book is now available.
Review: This is just an announcement from the Author. This book is now available. Feb. 16, 1999.