TESTIMONIALS AND REVIEWS

See what others are saying

"First, I'd like to say that I strongly recommend the PSA Distance-Learning Program. The strong point of the program is that it provides an excellent correlation between "idealized" structure and "real" aircraft parts. In addition, the course provides real-world engineering problems, problems that you will see in your career over and over again. I would say that students who have successfully completed this program have demonstrated that they have the basic skills required to analyze aircraft structure.
Although I referred to other reference sources during the course, most often, the course textbook itself was the best reference. Today, I usually refer to the course textbook first. I like the way the analysis techniques are presented. I know of no other course or program that is so straight to the point or that so directly addresses real-world stress analysis calculations for metallic structures.
Thanks so much. I have learned a lot, and the course has helped me to become a DER [Designated Engineering Representative]. I will continue to recommend the program to engineers that I work with."

—Steve S. Company DER - Structures

"As the Distance-Learning Program concludes with the final submission of my coursework, I would like to thank all of you at Lake City Publishing Company for the excellent course structure, reviews of my submitted work, and the superb administration that brought it all together."

—John B.
INBIS - United Kingdom

"Well, you might like to know that I've enjoyed working the problems out in the course so much that I've taken a job with Boeing to do this same kind of work full-time. I will be moving to Seattle next week."

—John V.
Boeing Stress Analyst

"I have enjoyed the course and found it very useful to the MRB work that I am currently doing in Foley, Alabama. It's been great working with you folks. And I will not hesitate to recommend the course to others in the future."

—Mark G.
BF Goodrich Aerospace—Foley, Alabama

"Thanks for your assistance and patience during the past 12 months. I definitely found the course challenging, but rewarding—and have already utilized some aspects of the course at work. Please pass on my thanks to my instructor for his assistance as well."

—Paul R.
FLTFL/RAAF Defence Australia

"Thanks so much! It was a pleasure working with you and my instructor. You folks are such a well-organized company! I highly recommend you to people that are asking me questions about your course! I enjoyed the course and learned a lot! I am so proud of myself (and so is my husband!)!! Thanks again and good luck! I wish you tons of students!"

—Guylaine B.
Bombardier Aerospace Defence Service

"The Distance-Learning Program has changed my complete perspective on how to analyze structures. Your Program bridges the gap between what I have been taught at university and the actual application of stress analysis to real-world problems. The course has empowered me with a renewed self-confidence and a drive to succeed. . . . Many thanks! By the way, I've just accepted a position with GKN Westlands."

—JAMES A.
Hawker Pacific - Australia

"This is a great course. The best money and time that I've ever spent. The course was easy-to-follow, shows you how to apply the techniques learned, removes the mystery, and teaches you how to be methodical. It has been a pleasure to be a student in your Program."

—Mark H.
Dynamic Plane Company - United Kingdom

"I thought you did a great job of administering the course. You always had prompt replies to all my questions, and the cover sheets always gave me an idea of where I needed to be in order to stay on schedule. Very professional. This was a challenging class. I took the course with the goal of preparing myself better for an eventual transition into airframe design or stress. I feel that I have met that goal. Like all fields of study, I find that the more I learn, the more I discover what I don't know. This is certainly true in this case. But I'm much better positioned now than I was a year ago. Best of luck for your continued success!"

—Brian H.
V-22 Support Equipment

"Please feel free to call on me anytime in the future for a referral. I think your course is a great boon to any aspiring stress engineer or designer who wants to learn more about aircraft stress analysis. If I would have had this course when I first became a stress engineer, things would have been much easier for me. And I can tell you of more than a few colleagues of mine who need this course to do their jobs better. My wife reads my E-mails and thinks you do a great job of encouraging me to stay on schedule. Thanks for all of the help. Best wishes in the future."

—Pete C.
Learjet - Bombardier

"It's great news to have passed the course! Thank you for helping me achieve this goal. I found the course to be informative and I have already applied many of the concepts that I have learned in the course to problems that I have encountered at work. Please feel free to use me as a reference for your course. I have a lot of good things to say."

—Tony R.
Aerostructures Group

"Thanks very much! As a primer to the industry, the course is brilliant. It's something that I've found very valuable, especially for building on my intuition for structural behavior and problem-solving ability. I can honestly say that I feel as though I'm a better engineer after having completed this course."

—Daniel N.
GKN - Australia

"The PSA course has been fantastic! It has unlocked the mystery of stress analysis for me. I wish I had taken this course many years ago. The textbook has been excellent. Thank you for preparing such a good course, and sharing your knowledge and experience and reviewing my assignments so well. What I've learned from your course will help me do a better job and benefit my company's products as well as my career and sense of contribution. I am manager of mass properties and I will be strongly encouraging my group to likewise take advantage of this excellent learning opportunity."

—Dan W.
Gulfstream Aerospace—Savannah, Georgia

"We at Australian Aerospace have found that the Flabel course offers great value for us as a training aid for younger engineers. As such, I will shortly be forwarding details to you about more of our engineers participating in the Program."

—Stephen B.
Australian Aerospace Limited—Australia

"The course was fantastic. The course content was logical and easy-to-read. The textbook and structured coursework enabled me to develop the necessary skills to analyze aircraft structure as well as forming an excellent base of understanding of the subject matter. I will certainly be recommending this course to my colleagues."

—Travis D.
Aeronautical Engineers—Australia

"I feel like I understand structures much better. Those of us here at Quest that have taken your course are quite vocal about how much we feel it has helped us as engineers, and as a result, almost every engineer here has a copy of your book and several others are considering taking your course. If you ever travel up to Sandpoint, stop by, we would really enjoy meeting the people that have influenced our designs, and would be more than happy to give you a tour of our facility."

—Brad S.
Quest—Sandpoint, Idaho

"I'm so delighted to have successfully completed the distance-learning program. The course has been a rich learning experience, and I have enjoyed developing my skills and knowledge. It has also helped me on-the-job, enhancing my performance and confidence as a structural engineer."

—Andrew G.
BAE Systems—Australia

"I learned a lot from my errors, and I hope that this is reflected positively in my final exam solutions. I would also like to commend the author for writing a textbook that was so easy-to-read and such an excellent source to use for solving aircraft structural problems. I use it regularly at my work here at BAE, and I am sure I will refer to it regularly in the future.

—Elias A.
BAE Systems—Australia

"Thank you for your help and support throughout the Program. I learned a lot. I am very happy to have done the course. You have done a great thing for design engineers, enabling us to understand structures so we can design better airplanes in the future. The course textbook was very useful."

—Miguel G.

"I thought the course was great. I'm trying to talk to as many of my fellow engineers as I can into taking the course."

—Marshall B.

"I have learned a lot about the structure of the airframe in this course. I have already used some of the principles I learned in some of my substantiations at work."

—Billy J.
Erickson AirCrane

"I have really enjoyed being part of this course and I really think that what I learned during this course will be very helpful in my career. I have already recommended the course to several colleagues at work."

—Ozjur P.

"I found the course highly professional and of immense value. As a matter of fact, I've recommended that PSA be presented to all new graduate Air Force design engineers. It looks like they've already given permission for five more candidates to enroll early next fiscal year."

—Sjean L.

"As an accomplished design engineer, Practical Stress Analysis for Design Engineers has given me the additional engineering experience that I so desperately needed. From this training material, I was able to demonstrate 'immediate' on-the-job performance. Now, when I'm faced with the kind of engineering problems that seem so complex and difficult, I can take appropriate action as the situation arises without waiting for direction. I can do this with confidence and with the assurance that when my drawings are released—they're final."

—Boeing Engineer

"This is not just another engineering book, but has helped me to achieve the equivalency of many years' of practical engineering experience. No other source can make this claim—no other textbook, university, or engineering program that I know of. There is nothing else quite like it! I was able to immediately apply what I learned on-the-job. This is truly a practical engineering book for design engineers!"

—Northrop Corporation Engineer

" Not only has this book enabled me to enhance my career but is a most valuable expedient to realizing years' of practical engineering experience. The material is very PRACTICAL."

—Lockheed Missiles and Space Company Engineer

"I highly recommend this book to engineers who want an effective way of immediately enhancing their professional careers. In fifteen years, my only regret is not having had the opportunity to learn stress analysis from a practical book like this early on in my career."

—NASA—John F. Kennedy Space Center Engineer

"I have learned more in the Distance-Learning Program than the entire 5 years I've spent working in the aerospace industry. The material has helped me to reduce the time-consuming process of developing reliable structure, which now allows me to pay more immediate attention to other significant design considerations."

—McDonnell Douglas Corporation Engineer

"For the first time in my life I'm actually learning and understanding stress analysis; however, it kind of 'scares me' to think that I've been designing structure all of these years without it—literally, I feel like I've been designing structure by the seat of my pants. . . .

—Bell Helicopter Textron Engineer

REVIEWS

Publication:	Practical Stress Analysis for Design Engineers
	Jean-Claude Flabel, Lake City Publishing Company, 1997-2013
	Deluxe Hardbound Edition, 474 illustrations and drawings, 685 pages.

REVIEW written by Frank Reginald Wall

The author explains the essence of aircraft stress analysis simply and eloquently in this new textbook. This book provides not only an introduction to the fundamentals of aircraft stress analysis for inexperienced design engineers (in the form of an instruction manual for their study and design use) but can also be used as a handy reference by more experienced engineers in this field. This comprehensive work is succinctly crafted to offer each engineer a systematic, hands-on approach to engineering designs based on industry-proven methodologies. Brilliantly portrayed, emphasis is placed on the solution of actual aircraft structural designs so realistic that working engineers and aircraft enthusiasts—designers and experimenters—can easily relate to their own aircraft designs. To avoid the time-consuming approaches to the analysis of many designs, wherever possible, shortcuts, approximate methods, and rule-of-thumb methods of analysis will be employed. This will provide convenient and reliable methods of analysis with sufficient accuracy to use in preliminary and investigative stages of design work.
This book is intended to develop the engineer’s ability to make intelligent decisions on a well-informed basis, to analyze and study the structural behavior of new and existing designs, and to achieve a level of engineering competency “unmatched” by existing educational programs or reference sources. This book has a wealth of information about “practical theory” and enough “example problem solutions” included to make the material practical-to-use and easy-to-understand by working design engineers and aircraft enthusiasts.
To efficiently design an aircraft structure, the principles of stress analysis (as contained in this book) are used to assist and support these individuals in arriving at practical design solutions for new and innovative designs. The author has incorporated into this publication: instructor lecture notes, hundreds of illustrations and drawings, actual example problems, and interactive question-and-answer discussions encountered in the live classroom sessions that were selectively taught at major U.S. aerospace companies. From this, a quality reference book was created that can be used to completely master the fundamentals of stress analysis and, as an added-bonus, enable designers to achieve the equivalency of “many years” of actual engineering experience. As many designers and stress professionals have stated about this book, “there is nothing else quite like it.”
This is a book for those individuals who want to go beyond mere academic training to those who desperately want to know and understand “real” aircraft structure. The following main topics are covered: (1) Principles of Statics; (2) Design and Analysis of Axial and Bending Members; (3) Connection Analysis; (4) Shearing Stresses; (5) Shear and Tension Clip Supports; (6) Crippling of Compression Members; (7) Design and Analysis of Column Members; (8) Shear-Resistant Beams; and (9) Cutouts and Hole Reinforcements.
This is a comprehensive work that will immediately assist and support these individuals so that they can perform effectively in many different and unique design situations. By pursuing a diligent and thorough study of this material to its conclusion, this knowledge can be attained without enduring the rigors of formal academic training. This book may be purchased directly from the publisher for $119.00 plus shipping and handling (in U.S. dollars).

Frank Reginald Wall
—Aerospace Designer Consultant