Adriaan Beukers

The Inevitable Renaissance of Minimum Energy Structures

Lightness

Ed van Hinte

Flying Lightness paints a picture of a heroic century of aircraft development against the background of steadily increasing travel speeds. Since the Wright brothers made their first brief flight over 100 years ago, aircraft construction seems to have become stuck in a rut. Today, rapid advances in the field of composites are opening up new possibilities for optimizing aircraft configurations and revising structural principles. Composites are combinations of two or more physically distinct materials that enhance each other's properties. The new modes of system integration and improved structural quality they offer may even produce a 30 percent more efficient 'blended wing' passenger plane. Flying wings, once just a footnote in the history of air transport, could well become the aircraft of the 21st century. Best Dutch Book Design 2005.

Promises for Structural Elegance

Flying Lightness

This book is an appeal to start designing minimum weight applications to seriously save energy. It also offers practical advice for doing so. 'Designing Lightness' entertains the reader with its free associations, creating unexpected crosslinks between the world of composite materials and structural solutions. It therefore precedes the conventional approach to sustainability, which focuses on symptoms rather than causes of environmental overload. The book is of interest to all designing disciplines, combining packaging, vehicles, skyscrapers and nanoscale phenomena.00Adriaan Beukers is an emeritus professor in Lightweight Structures. Ed van Hinte is a writer and award-winning critic with a design and engineering background. The book is the extended and improved sequel to their book Lightness, which appeared in 1998.

Adriaan Beukers

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