Fundamentals of Aircraft and Airship Design: Airship Design and Case Studies (AIAA Education)

This volume contains a wealth of case studies that round up the information in Volume 1 to result in what it is arguably the best written book in Aircraft Design ever written. Don't waste your time with other books, learn from a classic, a former member of the famous Skunk Works group at Lockheed.

Excellent for airship and aerostats, I was looking more for the second part. The experience and the study cases in aviation, and even when is there It wasn't what I was looking for, because there is not any kind of example of math.

Good reference on designing airships. The book has a few shortcomings - the authors are mostly Lockheed Martin employees so it's a bit Lockheed-centric, and there are some areas where more detail would be helpful. But it's a helpful book in a niche area of aerospace engineering, and the best text I've found on airship design.

This is pretty close to a "step by step how to" guide for the early design stages of an airship. By the end you can have a pretty good preliminary design which includes airship shape, buoyancy, length, tail size, engine power, layout and materials. You'll also be able to estimate the weight, payload capacity, altitude ceiling, speed and mission length. More importantly, you'll understand the trade offs, and have an appreciation for how your design compares to other airships.It does not cover detailed design: if you're serious about taking the preliminary design further, then this book won't cover that. Note this is not a criticism, just an information statement. After all, the book is called "Fundamentals".About half the book is taken up with design case studies relating to both Volume 1 (aircraft) and Volume 2 (airships). Only 1 of the 7 case studies is about airships, and even that is a relatively short study more like an extended article. So really only half this book is about airships.The book requires persistence: sometimes variables turn up in equations with no apparent explanation of what they are. I found sometimes you have to go back several pages to find out what a symbol means, and I occasionally had to research outside of the book. Also, equations are mostly written for US measures (pounds, cubic feet, etc). While there are some conversion charts, I found myself looking online for missing links (because I'm doing all my working in metric).I noticed a persistent bias toward one specific design concept - namely, a multi-lobed hybrid design. You could almost retitle the book as "how to design the Lockheed Martin P-791, oh and also other kinds of airships too". Again this is not really a criticism because, to their credit, the authors included a lot of really great design data and they take you step-by-step through the design calculations. Everything's there for more traditional designs as well as hybrid designs.Overall I highly recommend this book if you know what you're getting.