View article

THE ongoing revolution in computer-aided manufacturing has significantly removed the constraints being placed on the design and manufacturing of a structure due to manufacturing limitations. Availability of high-performance computing and commercially available software such as MSC. NASTRAN [1, 2](a general purpose finite element program for structural response analysis and design optimization) and MATLAB (a versatile tool to perform computations using linear algebra, computational techniques, optimization methods, etc.) is having an enormous effect on the design of structures.

Together, the software for design and the computer-aided manufacturing are bound to play a major role in the design of all future aerospace and other related structures. We envision an environment in which design and manufacturing, using modern information technology, would be integrated into one step, this is also consistent …