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Modeling and Simulation of Aerospace Vehicle Dynamics (AIAA Education)

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Comments on
"Modeling and Simulation of Aerospace Vehicle Dynamics"

Here we have a modern Flight Dynamics treatise!

Dr. Zipfel presents his book as an account of Modeling and Simulation techniques; in fact, it is much more: it is, as we just said, a modern, exhaustive and deep Flight Dynamics treatise.

In the first six chapters, where Dr. Zipfel presents the theoretical foundations of Flight Dynamics, he introduces the reader to the very powerful, elegant and concise Tensorial formulation (which is uncommon except in very few, specialized reports), which is elevated to an axiomatic level ("from tensor modeling to matrix coding", in his words). This formulation, when applied to the Rational Mechanics and Modeling chapters(2 to 6), should allow the undergraduate (or recently graduated) student to see and enjoy the power and beauty underlying in these old physics branch. These chapters could configure an excellent text as part of a Mechanical or Aeronautical Engineering graduated level Rational Mechanics course (which we will intend to verify in the following course at National University of Córdoba, Argentina).

The second part of the book (which we should define as the "Aerospace" part), is devoted to Aerospace System simulation itself: beginning (in Chapter 7) with a blow of fresh air on our old, loved Perturbation Equations introducing the reader in the specificities of the Flight Dynamics (i.e. Aerodynamic forces and moments modeling), Dr. Zipfel leads with the most awkward part of Dynamics Analysis: The modeling of complete vehicles (regardless they are planes, missiles, launch vehicles or spacecrafts), in which the range of subsystems, and links between them, involved may feel sick to the beginner (and, sometimes, to experienced engineers). Again, beginning with basics (3-D.O.F. modeling), the reader is conveyed in a simultaneously strict an pleasant way to the deeps of full 6-D.O.F. simulations, including items such as Control, Guidance and Navigation Systems, Seekers, full non-linear aerodynamics and stochastic effects. The specialized engineer will find these Chapters as primary reference for any concrete modeling task.
The primary tool used by Dr. Zipfel in his task is CADAC software (Computer Aided Design of Aerospace Concepts), which we see as one of the bests Aerospace Simulation open codes available worldwide. Its modularity, documentation and completeness allow the reader to quickly understanding, as well as to perform modifications to suit it to specific needs. This software is highly valuable both for students and specialized engineers needed to develop simulation tools.

In brief, we found Modeling and Simulation of Aerospace Vehicle Dynamics a great book for both engineering students and specialized engineers; everybody will enjoy reading it, because its elegant and concise notation and its deep and rigorous mathematical treatment, as well as the powerful tools that Dr. Zipfel puts in the engineers' hands. This book should be on the desk of any simulation engineer as a primary reference in his day-to-day job.

Eduardo Zapico Professor, Aer. Eng., National University of Córdoba, Argentina, Scientific manager, Nostromo Consulting, Córdoba

Marcelo Martinez Manager Aerodynamics ,Nostromo onsulting ,Cordoba -Argentina

I strongly recommend this text. I just like it.

I'm not the authoritative reviewer you may need. Pay more attention to those who have taught from this book, or who have used it to develope an airframe. In my pre-retirement career though, I did pay a lot of attention to flight test data reduction. So after a few hours studying this text I can surely say I wish I had had it then. I once argued with an engineer about the relative merits of quaternions and Euler angles, as if one had to chose. A quick check in this text clearly shows how useful they both are and how they're used together.

Zipfel bases his analyses on the tensor ideas that allow an airframe model to be developed independently of the reference coordinates in which the airframe is ultimately located. In other words in a form invariant under coordinate transformations. His tensor notation is somewhat different than might be found in common tensor analysis texts, but it is clearly developed in early easy to follow chapters and is formalized in an appendix. Don't be annoyed that he used E for the identity matrix instead of I, and an overbar instead of a super T for transpose. There's not much that would confuse the reader with complex conjugates.

The book is very well illustrated with helpful charts and diagrams.

Zipfel sometimes diverges from the formalities of technical writing to let you know he enjoys some of the developments that are downrignt exciting. There's a pleasure for the reader.

Zipfel's basic developments are clear and complete, but he advises that the engineer has just started when the basics are understood. The engineer's client will want to know the quantitative effects of an airframe design. The book then becomes a virtual user's manual for simulation software that Zipfel has developed, CADAC, computer aided design of aerospace concepts, which is available for the downloading in either Fortran or C++, which he call CADAC++.

Well this book has so much information that it could have been "the" book on flight dynamics and simulation. Unfortunately it went all wrong in my opinion. To begin with the theoretical part in first five or so section using tensors becomes a long tedious exercise in symbol manipulation. There should be a balance between mathematical elegance and the intuitively obvious! One can use the high machinery of functional calculus to give simple and elegant proofs of results and properties in matrix theory, but that would deprive the student of actually learning about matrices. Unfortunately the tonsorial approach turns the theoretical aspects of dynamics in moving frame into some cook recipe.
As any beginning student of calculus will tell you that they first learn the definitions of derivatives and integral in terms of basic concepts involving limits etc, and then formulas are used. Authors approach in this text book is exactly the opposite.

As far simulation and modeling part of the book, it is very comprehensive and
Author does well to start form 3DOF and guides the reader gradually to 6DOF models. As pointed out by few others Fortran is somewhat outdated and not taught any longer. This could turn off few users.

This book is mostly THEORY with less emphasis on application. The title should be "Theory of Modeling and Simulation of Aerospace Vehicle Dynamics". It does do a great job on the theory but simulations are software and require code and there is very little coverage of this in this book. The simulation code the book uses is Fortran. I don't even believe they teach Fortran at the universities anymore.

2010.03.01 Update
I originally bought this book assuming it was about simulation when in truth it is about modeling. The modeling part is about ALOT of different topics besides simulations of moving bodies. I have several aerospace books I use as references but most of them are very lacking in application. I have used this book several times regarding guidance and navigation subjects which other books have not covered or covered very poorly. The kicker is these subjects are important but they are not even listed in the table of contents (but are in the index)! Peter does a very good job in this book but the table of contents are top level. This book covers many topics well but one wouldn't know it by the table of contents.