TO My Teachers Acknowledgements

has guided me throughout this project with his brilliant ideas whilst allowing me the freedom to work in my own way. His energy and enthusiasm always motivated me whenever I found myself in difficult situations. It was his Applied and Computational Mechanics course that motivated me to take up the Finite Element Analysis as topic for my ME project. Without his guidance and encouragement the thesis would not have been completed. I would like to thank Prof. M.S. Bhatt, Chairman, Department of Aerospace En-gineering for providing me excellent work environment. I also thank the faculty members of the Aerospace department and other departments in Indian Institute of Science from whom I had the privilege to learn many concepts and fundamentals which proved to be very valuable during this project. I would like thank my classmates and friends and particularly Pawan and Ashish who have been a great help whenever I failed to see through the sometimes obvious and other times not so obvious things. In addition I would like to thank, Sundararajan Natarajan, Phd scholar, Cardiff University, Wales, U.K and Stéphane Bordas, Professor, Cardiff University, Wales, U.K for constantly being in touch through emails and providing support whenever needed. I would also like to thank my parents who have always taught me to follow my heart no matter what obstacles I might encounter. I am greatly indebted to them for their unconditional support and encouragement all through my life. i Publication from this wor