The objective of the course is to equip the senior year aerospace enginering students with the relevant infrastructure to carry out the design of aircraft sub-structures like wings, fuselages, landing gears etc. The course aims at achieving its objective by introducing the following general concepts used in the design process.

• Introduction of design philosophies like damage tolerance, safe- life, fail-safe
• Establishment of relations between the design requirements and airworthiness regulations
• Introduction of the aircraft data requirements and description of the critical airloads used in the design and analysis of aircraft structures
• Introduction of the aeroelastic stability design constraint
• Overview of the role and lay-out of main structural members used in aircraft structures
• Initial sizing calculations based on design constraints such as stress, local buckling
• General design considerations used in the structural joints and fittings
• Fatigue failure consideration and its relation with design philosophies, fatigue loads in aircraft operations and fatigue life analysis methods