Interactive Aircraft Design for Undergraduate Teaching

Abstract

This paper presents new software package developed for Aircraft Design. It is intended primarily to be used for undergraduate teaching. The software does everything that is needed in preliminary design environment. It is able to predict the empty and maximum takeoff weights to an accuracy of better than 5%. The performance data computed by the software agrees very favourably with the published data of Airbus and Boeing aircraft, for a wide range of flight conditions. An interactive interface to the USAF DATCOM has also been developed to provide estimation of aircraft stability derivatives which can be used in flight simulation work to investigate the dynamic behaviour of the aircraft design under consideration.