Hello everyone,

I hope you are doing great.

I have completed BS Mechanical Engineering and MS Aerospace Engineering and I am working in an aerospace research and development organization in a third world country for last five years. My organization is a relatively new and was established around 6.5 years ago. Due to number of reasons including lack of financial resources and mismanagement, we are not trained at all. It is like hiring fresh graduates and then asking them to perform structural design and analysis of aerostructures of almost all categories of aircraft.

Performing any modification on existing aircraft or design a new one requires extensive knowledge and experience which I lack. Additionally, it is extremely risky because human lives are at stake. During the course of my academic and professional career, I have studied the following topics:

1. Euler Bernoulli / classical beam theory
2. Timoshenko beam theory
3. Torsion of beams
4. Thin-walled beams (axial, bending, shear stresses)
5. Finite element models of the above

I have surface knowledge of a lot of topics (for example, rigid body elements, modeling of fasteners in finite element models, stress singularities, submodeling and super-elements, etc.) but I lack sufficient knowledge to apply them in real world applications. For example, I know that before design of a new aircraft, engineers build a load / global finite element model which typically consists of CROD, CBEAMS, CSHEAR, CSHELL (1D and 2D elements in addition to springs, bushes etc.). The loads are applied on the global FE models and then displacements / forces are imported to detailed FE models for stress analysis (if we import forces, then we need to somehow constrain our system to avoid singularity of the stiffeness matrix, which can done through the use 3-2-1 technique or inertia relief). These detailed models are made up of 3D elements. To transfer loads from GFEM to DFEM, we use RBEs or some sort of interface elements since DOFs in a 3D elements does not match with DOFs in 1D/2D elements.

The point is I lack sufficient knowledge and I want to become a better engineer. I can learn analysis software using tutorials available on Youtube but I believe these software are like a crutch. Most of the times, academically poor or lazy people use these software and rely on their results without actually understanding the physics of the problem. I have seen people determining the fatigue life of an aerostructure without understanding mean-stress correction, surface roughness effects, certainty of survival, etc.

I know that most experienced / old engineers use Bruhn or MC Niu's book for analytical calculations. When I read Bruhn's book, I don't understand most of the things. These books do not cover theoretical background of the analytical formulations presented.

Keeping in mind these things, please suggest me how to become a better structural design and analysis engineers (without switching my job :P).

I am thankful to all of you.