We have been very busy with a major project that we are planning to launch early next year. Over the last 18 months the interest in the reference material we make available through our website has grown to the point where we have up to one thousand downloads per day. The reference data library is referenced directly from several university libraries and we have regular users from all the major aircraft OEMs. The way the data is kept and the presentation does not serve this demand well and we have been working to create a better website to present more reference data in a much more useful way.
We also have thousands more reference documents and analysis tools that we have accumulated through out work and want to make available to our users. We will be launching the Abbott Aerospace Technical Library to bring all of these documents and tools together stored in a better data storage system with better search methods and a much improved content and still keeping everything completely free.
The analysis spreadsheets have been expanded and updated and we will be moving the analysis spreadsheets back home from the XL-Viking project. They will be curated under the Abbott Aerospace Technical Library. The spreadsheets will be live hyperlinked to the relevant reference material in the library. We have been working on standardizing the spreadsheet methods and presentation. We will also be standardizing the spreadsheets to operate in the Imperial/British unit system of lb/in, this reflects the majority of the public domain material that we now reference. We also have many more spreadsheet methods that we have been developing and will be releasing as they are checked.
We also have been working on a single reference text book that will bring together the public domain references, the spreadsheets and other software tools. This will give the analyst a reference that can be cited and provides fully referenced methods hyper-linked to the source texts and spreadsheet methods to allow the reader to create fully defined and referenced analyses and reports with confidence and ease. This free e-book will be unique in its scope and utility
The reference text book is the end result of the discovery and knowledge of the massive amount of public domain methods and data. We realized that almost all of the methods and data available in commercial and proprietary OEM references originate in the public domain or can be derived from first principles. 50 years ago Bruhn created his excellent book referencing NACA papers and wartime reports, taking those references and giving coherent overviews of the methods and the best compromise analysis method from the multiple sources. We are humbly trying to emulate that example using the best of the public domain data referenced from Bruhn and the best of the public domain information produced in the last 50 years since Bruhn was written.
By making the textbook a free E-book we can update the document on a regular basis as new and improved methods become available. We can incorporate reader suggestions and be reactive to the users.
The library will be searchable using a tag cloud as the primary means of locating material. All the classes of material will be tagged with the type of material, the source of the material and tags relating to the subject material. All of these classes of entries in the Technical Library – the reference data, the spreadsheets, the software tools and the text book will be made available for free for anyone to download, adapt and use.
We hope to become the engineers best source for reference data, analysis methods and software tools.
Please be patient with us as we move towards this ambitious goal. Updates to the current set of references on the Abbott Aerospace web site will occur less often but the wait will be well worth it.
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Fantastic! Yes it is an ambitious goal. But you have done it before.
I used a couple of reference documents from you, and indeed, the spreadsheets. Thanks.
I’m trying to collect all and any spreadsheets compiled using the E.F.Bruhn’s 1973 version of Analysis & Design of Flight Vehicle Structures. However, it’s hard finding a central source of reliable, non macro type spreadsheets that still function with the latest version of MS Excel. I was hoping that by now this simple task would be easy to do. After all the book has been a type of Analysis Bible for aerospace strength and Structural analysis types for decades. What’s the plan from Abbot Aerospace? I’d be willing to sign up for a prescription if I could see be confident the spreadsheets were well designed and macro proof. That means that all the macro’s are simple enough that they will work with future upgrade of Excel forever? 🙂
All of our spreadsheets do not have any visual basic macros embedded in them. They do make calls to a plugin that is optional to show the equations in math format but they work just the same without the plugin installed, those cells that call a response from the plugin will display errors. We do not use embedded visual basic code because you cannot copy the analysis between spreadsheet files so no matter how complex the spreadsheets look they use all vanilla, native excel functions only for the analysis. I hope that helps.