We would like to thank all of our employees, subcontractors, partners and clients for making 2014 the best year yet for Abbott Aerospace. Have a very merry Christmas and a great new year and we look forward to helping more people take to the air in 2015.

The Abbott Aerospace Team

To try our free Stress Analysis Engineering Spreadsheets click below

To try our Add-in for Microsoft Excel for Windows click below

Stratos Aircraft have successfully completed the flap structural test to prove safety of flight for the prototype. The flap, while attached to the back of the wing, was taken to 1.2 times limit load and the wing box, attachments, flap and vane carried the load with no adverse effects and no noise from the aircraft structure. The lightweight flap and vane are damage tolerance carbon fiber laminate structure developed by Abbott Aerospace Inc., integrated with the flap system developed in house by Stratos.

Congratulations to the Stratos Team on the successful completion of another important program milestone.

http://www.stratosaircraft.com/

To try our free Stress Analysis Engineering Spreadsheets click below

To try our Add-in for Microsoft Excel for Windows click below

In Bend, Oregon, USA,  the Stratos Aircraft Company has successfully completed the wing test program for the Stratos 714 prototype aircraft. The wing has now been taken to limit internal pressure (for non arbitrary cases), 1.15 x limit down bending and 1.25 x limit wing up-bending – this clears the prototype wing structure for full envelope flight testing. Abbott Aerospace Inc has developed the composite structure of the wing, and the rest of the airframe, for Stratos as well as performing the loads engineering function. Special thanks to Nirav Shukla, our in house stress engineer, who completed the last round of weight optimization for the wing structure. Congratulations to Stratos aircraft on achieving this critical milestone!

http://www.stratosaircraft.com/

This week we delivered the complete prototype engineering package for a unique main landing gear (complex fuselage mounted gear with recycling doors) for a unique aircraft project based in California. The design was completed in Solidworks and the analysis done using our own in house tools and FEMAP. Thanks to our in house talent Tony, Knut, Peter and Santiago for completing the engineering package. Thanks also to Steve Forness and Charles lee, the technical principals on the program, for their guidance. A special thanks to Endeavor Analysis for handling the shock strut work.

With reference to previous posts about the Beam in a Socket Method. Help came from the very capable and gracious Bosko Zdanksi, who provided me with a 1959 complete derivation from first principles of this method in a spreadsheet form. The full updated automated method has been posted to the spreadsheets page here

Last week I received a legal threat over a spreadsheet we have posted on the website. I am not sure who was behind it, the e-mail address that it originated from looked to be temporary. The name looked to be fake.

The threat regarded a ‘beam in a socket’ method that appears in the Lockheed Stress Notes. This (possibly) well meaning individual thought that the method was a proprietary Lockheed method and had built up some level of outrage that we had posted a spreadsheet version of the method to the site.

I knew that the same method also appears in other company manuals so was unlikely to be a method derived in-house by, and exclusively for the use of, Lockheed.

I put out a call for help on our Linked in ‘Aircraft Stress Analysis’ group to see if we could find a public domain resource or a mathematical derivation and a whole group of helpful engineers contributed information both publicly, posted to the discussion, and privately directly to me.

It is occasions like these that reminds me of how helpful, professional and generally fantastic people engineers are. So thanks to all for your support and assistance.

Good engineering karma to all.

Richard Abbott

We have added a (nearly) complete set of NASA Space vehicle design criteria in our free Technical Library.

We have uploaded a spreadsheet to calculate basic the wing in ground effect performance. This is in a prototype form and we have correlated it against one WIG craft.

(This spreadsheet is under review and will be back up on the website soon, apologies for any inconvenience)

Thanks to Fernando Romagnoli for catching an error in the 3D bolt group spreadsheet for multiple cases – it has been corrected and a new version has been up loaded here

Abbott Aerospace Inc. is opening a new project office at 637 Hurontaio Street, Collingwood, Ontario. Our new premises will ease accommodation issues at our current office and give us space to meet the growing demand for our services. We are also engaging a new consultant – I’m pleased to announce that Nirav Shukla will be joining our team.