Customer Reviews

Dynamics of Flight: Stability and Control

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Flight Dynamics is one of the most important and complicated fields in aerospace engineering. At my university KFUPM, students taking AE 426 (Flight Dynamics) are required to do 3 projects to pass the course. For these reasons, I have purchased 4 books in flight dynamics. Dynamics of Flight is one of these books that I would love to comment on in this review. Below is a list of points that summarizes my personal opinion about this book.

1)Compared to other flight dynamics book I used, Simplicity in this book, in particular, is something worthy of remark. You would not see big fat hamburger equations.

2)The policy mentioned above is quite very good, as it has made me in further read in this field. And this why I highly recommend it to beginners.

3)By and large, it is clear and easy to understand.

4)The book has good balance between theory and application.

5)At the end of each chapter, there is quite good number of problems to solve. However, the final answers to these questions are not provided.

6)I am 80% satisfied with the number of examples provided in this book compared to the number of examples provided in (Introduction to Aircraft flight Dynamics + Flight Dynamics Principles). But, it worth to mention that I faced similar problems (Boeing 747 numerical examples) given in this book in my major exams.Also we had some problems in which we were asked to write/ define flight dynamics and its importance. I found the answer to such equations in chapter 1 of this book as it has excellent introduction to flight dynamics.

7)This book was helpful to me in writing two of my project plus in my major exams as I mentioned earlier.

8) Very good appendixes at the end of the book that will refresh your mind in some topics required in this course.

9)Objectives of each chapter are stated.

10)The authors did excellent job by listing important points. In fact, this is something wonderful and remarkable in this book.

11)The figures that the authors used in explaining the equations of motion of a rigid airplane are not so good.

12)No PC programs in this book

"Dynamics of Fligth, Stability and Control" is a basic book for beginners who want to learn dynamics of flight. It doesn't have too many complicated equations and formula, but using simple phrases and sentenses to make readers can access easily. As my junior-college text book, I think this book is worthy.

This book is used for my third-year course, AerE 355-Aircraft Flight Dynamics and Control. All of my fellow classmates agree that this book leaves much to be desired. From day one, we joked, "This book is 1/3 the size of my other texts, yet twice the price... every page better be pure gold." It is not gold. It leaves many things undefined or ill-defined. I have never spent more time in a book searching for useful definitions. The reason I give it two stars is because no book can be as bad as Riley/Sturgis books.

The pace of the book is too fast for understanding the material. It should have at least twice as many pages so that a clearer understanding of the endless formulas within could be developed. I've seen the sub-sub-subscripts contained in this text used in others, so I can't complain too much about that. They wouldn't be terrible if a little more page real estate was used for explaining the concepts behind the equations. I think the average person would absolutely not be able to teach themself this material without additional supporting literature. If you need to use this text for a class, I hope you have a very knowledgeable instructor.

I might have given this book a 5 star rating had this been the year 1990. Don't get me wrong, this is what I used to learn flight controls, but it does make many assumptions and takes the usual shortcuts. The first half covers all aerodynamic stability, and flight controls are relegated to the final third. It only makes use of classical design methods, which is my biggest criticism. Only a few basic autopilots are covered. This book is in serious need of an updated edition. I suppose that most of you buying it will do so only because it's assigned to your courses, but there are better options out there. Try "Aircraft Control and Simulation" instead.