Important announcement

Dear visitor,

Please note that this OpenCourseWare platform will be replaced at the end of 2026 by a new platform (under the same url ocw.tudelft.nl).

Courses and their contents that are currently available the platform will partly be migrated. URL’s for this content will change and content might be unavailable for some time. In addition, some courses will not be available anymore.

If you are linking to specific courses on this platform (for instance for your students), please take timely measures to avoid problems with access. Possible actions are:

  • Download the materials to your local platform (laptop, server)
  • For educators only (including TU Delft lecturers): Contact us at ocw@tudelft.nl and inform us what course you are using in what context (institute, program, period of use, number of students). We will research (in collaboration with the authors of the course) and decide if we will migrate the course, and if yes, can supply you with a new url.

Thank you.

How do you design an aircraft or spacecraft? And in doing so, how do you keep the risk of failure minimal while bearing in mind that they will eventually fail?

In this course you will be taken on a journey through the structural and material design of aircraft. You will see and understand how aircraft and spacecraft are manufactured, and learn how safety is enshrined at every stage.

Experts from the Aerospace Structures and Materials Department of Delft University of Technology will help you explore and analyze the mechanical properties of materials; learning about manufacturing techniques, fatigue, loads and stresses, design considerations and more – all the scientific and engineering principles that structural and materials engineers face on a daily basis. By the end of the course, you will have learned to think like they do!

  • How aerospace structures are designed and why particular choices are made
  • Which materials are used and the reasons for using them
  • How to explain loads and stresses aerospace structures have to withstand
  • How aircraft and spacecraft are manufactured
  • The safety philosophies that are used in aerospace structural design and how they affect design choices
  • How to create preliminary design solutions for structural design problems
Creative Commons License
Introduction to Aerospace Structures and Materials by TU Delft OpenCourseWare is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://online-learning.tudelft.nl/courses/introduction-to-aerospace-structures-and-materials/.
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