Abstract
Most of the civilian commercial aircraft were designed in the past for at least 20–25 years and up to 90,000 flights. The aircraft design philosophy was based on safe life or fail-safe approaches. Many operators of commercial transport aircraft exceed these design service goals. Consequently, Non-destructive inspections (NDI) are mandatory for determining maintenance cycles, and as means for assessing damage and extent of the needed repair work. Presently, aircraft types are designed for the same service life, structural design according to fatigue and damage tolerance requirements. The ultimate purpose of the damage tolerance evaluation is the development of a recommended structural inspection program considering probable damage locations, crack initiation mechanisms, crack growth time histories and crack detectability, in the airframe structure and engine components to minimize the maintenance costs and to comply with the requirements of airworthiness regulations. The applications of damage tolerance requirements and the advances in light weight materials and composites lead to the need for defining structural integrity through NDI inspection program to ensure a high degree of reliability supported by evaluation tests for structural integrity. The damage tolerance principles, fatigue life assessment and new advances of NDI methodologies will be reviewed.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Swift T (Sept. 1997), Aging aircraft from the viewpoint of FAA. Presentation at DaimlerBenz Aerospace Airbus GmbH, Hamburg, Germany.
Research agenda for test methods and models to simulate the accelerated aging of infrastructure materials: Report of a Workshop. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/9622.html.
Schmidt HJ, Tober G (June 1999), Design of modern aircraft structure and the role of NDT. NDT.net, vol 4, no 6.
Hobbs C, Smith R, Beneath the surface. British Airways Technical Journal.
Haviland GP (1973), The USAF aircraft structural integrity program (ASIP). USAF, Aeronautical Systems Div., Wright-Patterson AFB.
Manual on low cycle fatigue testing (1969), American Society for Testing and Materials. ASTM STP 465, ASTM (Philadelphia).
Bannantine J, Comer J, Handrock J (1990), Fundamentals of metal fatigue analysis. Prentice Hall, New Jersey.
Miner MA (1945), Cumulative damage in fatigue. Journal of Applied Mechanics, vol 12, Trans. ASME, vol 67, pp. A159–A164.
Dowling NE (1982), A discussion of methods for estimating fatigue life. Proceedings SAE Fatigue Conference. Society of Automotive Engineers, Warrendale, PA, p. 109.
Broek D, Fail safe design procedures. Fracture Mechanics of Aircraft Structures, Chapter V, Liebowitz, Ed Agard, Document No 176.
Nicholls LF, Jefferson A, Martin CIP, Application of fracture mechanics in the fail-safe
Smith SH, Simpson FA, Damage tolerance analysis of an aircraft structural joint. AGARD-AG-257.
Damage Tolerance Design Handbook (1973). Parts 1 and 2, MCIC-HB-01.
Design of integrally stiffened structures, %–1. AGARD-AG-257.
Bellinger NC, Liao M, Forsyth DS, Komorowski JP, Advances in risk assessment technologies — HOLSIP. NRC Presentation in Canada.
Shinde S, Hoeppner DW (2007), Fretting fatigue case studies and failure analysis in holistic structural integrity closed loop design. Siemens Power Generation, Inc., Presented at ISFF5, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, April 21.
Birt EA, Jones LD, Nelson LJ, Smith RA (March 2006), NDE corrosion metrics for life prediction of aircraft structures, insight vol 48, no 3.
ASNT-Nondestructive Testing Handbook (1996), vol 9 and vol 10.
Khan AU (1999), Non destructive application in commercial aircraft maintenance. NDT-net June 1999, vol 4, no 6.
Forsyth DS, Komorowski JP, Marincak (February 2005), Correlation of enhanced visual inspection image features with corrosion loss measurements. III International Workshop on Advances in Signal Processing in NDE, Quebec City.
Mustafa V, Chahbaz A, Hay DR, Brassard M, Dubois S (December 1996), Imaging of disbonds in adhesive joints with lamb waves. Nondestructive Evaluation of Materials and Composites, SPIE vol 2944.
Chahbaz J, Gauthier M, Brassard and Hay R (September 20–23, 1999), Ultrasonic techniques for hidden corrosion detection in aircraft wing skin. Third Joint DoD/FAA/ NASA conference on Aging Aircraft, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Oster R, Eurocopter, Munich D (March 15–17, 1999), Computed tomography as a nondestructive test method for fiber main rotor blades in development, series and maintenance. International Symposium on Computerized Tomography for Industrial Applications and Image Processing in Radiology, Berlin, Germany.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Abdel-Latif, A.M. (2009). An Overview of the Applications of NDI/NDT in Engineering Design for Structural Integrity and Damage Tolerance in Aircraft Structures. In: Boukharouba, T., Elboujdaini, M., Pluvinage, G. (eds) Damage and Fracture Mechanics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2669-9_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2669-9_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-2668-2
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-2669-9
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)