A Wing Design Method for Aerospace Students and Home Builders: Strength, Weight, Flutter, Divergence, Buckling, Deflection, and Twist

Marty Ferman has developed a wing design method for use by Aerospace students in their senior design classes, and for the Home Builders of aircraft. The method allows for rapid determination of strength, weight, flutter, divergence, buckling, deflection, and twist. The method allows for preliminary design phase for a basic sizing, and then the interim and final phases follow to fill out the structure to a fabrication level. The flutter and divergence aspects are rarely covered in most design books, so there can be enhanced safety. The method presents a unique representation for the preliminary design phase where the wing skin thickness is a key factor readily found and used for the stiffness and weight calculations. Here the user can see what is needed. The method uses many closed-form expressions for the straight, unswept cantilevered wing of constant spanwise properties, with suggested forms for the non-uniform wing. This method was evolved by Ferman during his fifty-six years in Aerospace Industry and Academia.