General Aviation Preliminary Structural Design in a Personal Computer Environment

A personal computer based preliminary structural design system has been developed for general aviation aircraft. Structural design is coupled with other elements of the preliminary design process to provide a unique and powerful framework for the preliminary design process. Capabilities include structural layout, structural weight sizing and detailed stress analysis. All of these can be applied to a number of built-in (and user defined) structural configurations. The program is designed to reduce preliminary design time and produce an efficient well-documented structural design that complies with regulatory specifications.