Introduction to Aerospace Structures and Materials

Reviewed by Jeff Phillips, Assistant Professor, Hanover College on 4/7/21

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

The breadth of coverage is quite impressive, as is the depth of coverage of many issues. To me, this seems like more than an "Introduction" to aerospace structures and materials. The book assumes the reader has very little know of Materials Science, Statics or Mechanics of Materials, so in that sense it is an introductory level textbook.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

While I am not an expert on this subject, I did not find any issues with accuracy or biased content.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

While the field of aerospace is always incorporating new technology, the main focus of this textbook is on subjects that are timeless such as the behavior of materials and the translation of forces into stresses.

Clarity rating: 5

As a non-expert on this topic, I found the text easy to understand.

Consistency rating: 5

While I did not examine the equations in detail, I did not discover any problems with inconsistency.

Modularity rating: 5

Because the book includes so much background material, it would be easy to use almost every chapter as a stand alone lesson.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

It would have helped to have an introductory chapter that gave a "road map" of what was coming. While I understand the potential need to include background material on basic Materials Science such as a stress-strain curve, I found it surprising that the book did not start with the aspects of aerospace structures that make them different from any other structure. If you can design a car, why can't you just use the same approach for designing a rocket? I think taking that approach would help motivate students.

Interface rating: 4

Overall this looks like a high quality textbook, but I did notice some issues with some figures being distorted. There was also some inconsistency in the formatting of paragraphs. In most cases there was an extra line between the end of one paragraph and the start of another, but not always. Sometimes there was no extra line between paragraphs.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I found no errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

I did not find anything that would be of concern.

Comments

While the title of this book makes it sound like it is only about designing structures for space, it, in fact, also discusses how to design structures for air travel. Therefore, a more accurate title would be "An Introduction to Aeronautical and Aerospace Structures and Materials".

Reviewed by Bahaa Ansaf, Assistant Professor, Colorado State University - Pueblo on 11/11/19

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

This book covers many necessary and essential concepts of Aerospace Structures and Materials, such as solid material physics, and structural analysis, safety, manufacturability, availability, and cost. The book covers some topics adequately for an introductory level course for the BSc. Still, the coverage is not adequate to more advanced topics for graduate-level classes like the fatigue and structural dynamic analysis topics.
The author mentioned in the introduction that "Students should be aware that in the long end, decisions made within the field of aerospace structures and materials are often dictated by these soft (safety, manufacturability, availability, and cost) considerations rather than hardcore engineering (solid material physics, and structural analysis)"; This is not an accurate statement because engineering design in any field, not only aerospace industry, consider 'hard/soft' cores in the design optimization process, with different level of priority according to the application type.
No index provided.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

In general, the book seems accurate but still needs some proof editing to remove inconsistencies in nomenclature and symbols. (e.g., the example on page 115, I vs. L; Equation 10.6 (the amplitude stress (Sigma a) should be the absolute value of the average difference between Sigma max and Sigma min)

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The book is quite relevant to the field of aerospace structures and materials.

Clarity rating: 4

The book is a little confusing in presenting some topics that include advanced concepts without providing enough information to ensure a smooth transition, which makes it difficult for students to navigate the book by themself without instructor guidance.

Consistency rating: 5

The material presented in a consistent manner using internationally recognized units and terminology

Modularity rating: 4

The organization of the book is fine.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

Overall, the structure and flow seem fine. The author may want to keep working on the chapters to include some advanced concepts that can be introduced for graduate-level courses.

Interface rating: 3

There were several figures where the font size for the axes titles was very small that make them unreadable using a normal size window. Plots were inconsistent in their formatting throughout. The notation and the title of the multipart figures are not consistent and not clear. Figures and tables discussions in the text come after presenting the table or the figure itself in previous pages, which make a little confusion for the readers.
No Numbering is provided for the examples, and that makes it hard to reference them from outside the book.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

It seems fine, some minor errors or typos don’t cause significant confusion.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

N/A

Comments

The book doesn't provide end-of-chapter or homework/review problems.