Fail-Safe Structural Design

Abstract

Around the end of the fifteenth century were written what must have been about the first set of airworthiness requirements ever compiled. These were notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci in which he discussed the physics of flight and the design of flying machines. In one of these notebooks he wrote:—“ In constructing wings one should make one cord to bear the strain and a looser one in the same position so that if the one breaks under the strain the other is in position to serve the same function.”