This book covers important performance characteristics of aeronautical structures. The subject matter is presented in laymans terms without complicated mathematical details. This has been a basic one quarter course for safety, contracting, maintenance, research management, professional engineers and other professionals dealing with related aeronautical and systems engineering fields in the US Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT). The topics covered are aircraft design/ analysis, performance and their maintenance. The book addresses response characteristics of materials, and types of failures in aeronautical structures (e.g., fatigue, creep, fracture, buckling, and stress concentration) in both conventional metallic structures and composites. In most of the cases, as can be seen from publications resulting from AFIT masters level and PhD students work (Chapter 11), this subject matter was one of the preparatory courses for their thesis or dissertation. The author has more than 40 years experience in industry, research and academia including teaching this course for 5 years in AFIT.
