IAI Lavi - Engineering Trade Study

fltworthy

New Member
The author of a recently released book on Israel's cancelled Lavi fighter program has created a design trades briefing for the fighter - as both a web blog and a slide show:
Reflections from the Heights: Lavi - An Engineer's Perspective
Reflections from the Heights: Lavi - An Engineer's Perspective - Video and PDF

A lot of good material in general, and not necessarily specific to the Lavi.

The book itself is extremely well written: over 400 pages long. Definitely not a photographic essay, but a lot of technical data, written from the viewpoint of an aeronautical engineer. Very technically deep. Wish every fighter jet had a book about it written half so well.
 

ngatimozart

Super Moderator
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
Convince me as to why I or another Moderator shouldn't delete these two posts as spam.
 

fltworthy

New Member
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #4
Hardly

Let me give one example, extracted from one of the previously given links. This is an example from a trade study that went into selecting the vertical tail configuration for the Lavi fighter:
View attachment 6721

or another illustrating the trade considerations that went into the inlet design:
View attachment 6722

Where do you find these kind of developmental trade studies for a modern jet fighter? For free, no less, on the internet? You don't. Developers are very coy about sharing the engineering data that goes into their designs. The most that you will usually find is a couple of conceptual cross sections, but not the engineering trades and relationships that led one design to be selected over another.

I remember when I first read Gerard Keijper's book on the Saab Gripen for example (published in 2003 by AeroFax). An excellent book overall, well written, with a number of concept cross sections thrown in the early chapters - but with none of the trade considerations that went into down-selecting the final design. Even finding the official empty weights for the finished product was impossible, let alone manufacturer data for combat radius with different load-outs.

This kind of data does not come along every day. Spam? Hardly.
 

gf0012-aust

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
the reason for Ngatis caution is because we have had people flogging off links and books to further vested interests. ie self promotion or promoting another site which is outside the spirit of the Forum Rules re cross posting etc....

it would help to clarify that you have no personal interest etc... and then provide examples of your claims supporting - eg what you have just done in the prev post
 
Top