Materials mechanics plays a significant role in assessing the damage status and handling of an ageing aircraft. This paper deals with determination and use of operational loads monitoring regarding fatigue life evaluation at specifically damage critical locations as well as the resulting consequences in fleet management. Regarding damage-tolerant design specifically aspects such as simulation of multi-site damage cracking and optimised design of repairs are discussed. Finally some recent techniques and results with regard to structure integrated sensing in the context of smart structures is presented. It is now about 75 years ago since Palmgren established his damage accumulation rule and consideration of variable amplitude loading in fatigue life design emerged as an important contribution to light weight design promoted by people such as Gaßner. It is about 50 years ago since fracture mechanics emerged as a further contribution to light weight design by specifically introducing damage-tolerant design in aerospace structures. During the same period composite materials emerged as the big boost light-weight design allowing to better tailor materials anisotropy, mainly avoiding fatigue but however also dealing with new damage mechanisms such as delaminations. It is about 25 years ago when finite elements emerged as a tool to describe the stress, strain and thus damage distribution in complex structural geometries. Although all of these techniques and methods still undergo improvement, they have become established in engineering design nowadays. During the past year most of this has been computerised if it wasn't so already, which now even allows to manage complex aerospace structures having been designed in the past and required to endure several decades longer than the designers initially thought of. Looking at what emerges today, virtual reality is possibly the technique currently driving the designers community. What used to be done as a hardware mock-up in the past is nowadays done by fully on a virtual basis. Frames, stiffeners, rivets, systems, wire harnesses and much more can be assembled on the screen, viewed in 3D and even modified in a fraction of time compared to the past. Digital models allow directly to plot the requested manufacturing drawings and data sheets and go directly into the control of automated milling or riveting machines. It will not take very long until further digital models will be included such as used for aerodynamics, aeroelasticity, loads, and strength. Virtual reality can even become an issue for ageing aircraft where nothing could be digitised when such aircraft were designed decades ago.
Materials mechanics - the basis of advanced technology for ageing aircraft
Werkstoffmechanik - Basis neuer Technologien für die Beurteilung alternder Flugzeuge
Materialwissenschaft und Werkstofftechnik ; 32 , 4 ; 388-397
2001
10 Seiten, 16 Bilder, 18 Quellen
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Englisch
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