Inviting Disaster: Lessons From the Edge of Technology Review

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(More customer reviews)'Inviting Disaster' is a compelling and easy to read book. It is an introduction to accident theory for generalists, and is as interesting (perhaps more so) to nontechnical people as it is to engineers and the like. James Chiles discusses several major accidents (Challenger, Three Mile Island, Ocean Ranger, etc.) in well executed chapters with substantial background from previous precursor accidents or incidents. One reviewer seems to believe that this is a flaw, but I disagree. The reviewer seems to believe, for instance, that the R101 (a dirigible, not a blimp, as the reviewer wrongly states) is totally irrelevant to Challenger. In fact R101 was the Challenger of it's day, and the social, managerial and technological pressures that ultimately led to the R101 disaster ultimately led to Challenger as well. Chiles ties this theme together in a seamless manner in chapter after chapter.
This book is not a rigorous technical analysis of the individual disasters with the engineering and math associated with formal inquiries and technical (AAIB, NTSB, etc.) investigations. What it does better than any of the technical inquiries could ever do, though, is make a clear a compelling case for the problems that led to each of the accidents covered, treating man-machine interface issues with particular grace.
I have long been associated with the more technical aspects of accident investigation and safety systems, but have to say that while there are more technical accounts available for all of these accidents, if you are looking for an entry level (but complete) overview of accidents and systems safety, you can't go wrong with this book.

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Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach (Aiaa Education Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Mr. Raymer has managed to explain a very complicated process in a way that is both understandable and interesting. Conceptual aircraft design (i.e., starting with nothing but a set of performance criteria to be met) is a multi-variable problem in which the value of most of the variables depend on other variables. The solution of such problems require initial approximations with subsequent iterations. Mr. Raymer explains the conceptual design process, gives historic values used for first approximations and makes good use of actual examples. Two conceptual designs, one a homebuilt aerobatic aircraft and the other a supersonic fighter, are provided in the Appendix to illustrate the procedures described in the book. I found the book interesting both in subject matter and writing style. Although written as a college textbook, the use of actual aircraft to illustrate various points and the author's obvious desire to be precise about his descriptions makes the book easy to follow and fun to those interested in the subject.

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This textbook presents the entire process of aircraft conceptual design - from requirements definition through initial sizing, congfiguration layout, analysis, sizing and trade studies - in the same manner seen in industry aircraft design groups. Interesting and easy to read, it contains more than 900 pages of design methods, illustrations, tips, explanations and equations, and has extensive appendices with key data essential to design. For the third edition, Daniel Raymer has updated his book to reflect advances in technologies such as hypersonics, stealth and STOVL, and design methods including concurrent engineering, cost as an independent variable, and the impact of the factory of the future. With his usual easy-to-read style, he has expanded his treatments of such key areas as jet engine installation, CFD, trim analysis, CAD/CAM, propeller thrust analysis, weights estimation, cost analysis and multivariable optimization.Raymer has added, by popular demand, a step-by-step description of how a typical design is developed (with illustrations), and also describes the technical concepts behind some unusual design approaches such as tailless, canard-pusher, no-lateral-symmetry (Rutan Boomerang), wing-in-ground effect, and the hypersonic waverider. Along with the addition of metric data and equations, more than 30 new illustrations and homework examples have been added.

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