Proceedings of the FAA-NASA Symposium on the Continued Airworthiness of Aircraft Structures

This publication contains the fifty-two technical papers presented at the FAA-NASA Symposium on the Continued Airworthiness of Aircraft Structures. The symposium, hosted by the FAA Center of Excellence for Computational Modeling of Aircraft Structures at Georgia Institute of Technology, was held to disseminate information on recent developments in advanced technologies to extend the life of high-time aircraft and design longer-life aircraft. Affiliations of the participants included 33% from government agencies and laboratories, 19% from academia, and 48% from industry; in all 240 people were in attendance. Technical papers were selected for presentation at the symposium, after a review of extended abstracts received by the Organizing Committee from a general call for papers

Proceedings of the FAA-NASA Symposium on the Continued Airworthiness of Aircraft Structures

This publication contains the fifty-two technical papers presented at the FAA-NASA Symposium on the Continued Airworthiness of Aircraft Structures. The symposium, hosted by the FAA Center of Excellence for Computational Modeling of Aircraft Structures at Georgia Institute of Technology, was held to disseminate information on recent developments in advanced technologies to extend the life of high-time aircraft and design longer-life aircraft. Affiliations of the participants included 33% from government agencies and laboratories, 19% from academia, and 48% from industry; in all 240 people were in attendance. Technical papers were selected for presentation at the symposium, after a review of extended abstracts received by the Organizing Committee from a general call for papers

STAGS Developments for Residual Strength Analysis Methods for Metallic Fuselage Structures

A summary of advances in the Structural Analysis of General Shells (STAGS) finite element code for the residual strength analysis of metallic fuselage structures, that were realized through collaboration between the structures group at NASA Langley, and Dr. Charles Rankin is presented. The majority of the advancements described were made in the 1990's under the NASA Airframe Structural Integrity Program (NASIP). Example results from studies that were conducted using the STAGS code to develop improved understanding of the nonlinear response of cracked fuselage structures subjected to combined loads are presented. An integrated residual strength analysis methodology for metallic structure that models crack growth to predict the effect of cracks on structural integrity is demonstrate

Comparison of fatigue crack growth of riveted and bonded aircraft lap joints made of Aluminium alloy 2024-T3 substrates – A numerical study

Aircraft lap joints play an important role in minimizing the operational cost of airlines. Hence, airlines pay more attention to these technologies to improve efficiency. Namely, a major time consuming and costly process is maintenance of aircraft between the flights, for instance, to detect early formation of cracks, monitoring crack growth, and fixing the corresponding parts with joints, if necessary. This work is focused on the study of repairs of cracked aluminium alloy (AA) 2024-T3 plates to regain their original strength; particularly, cracked AA 2024-T3 substrate plates repaired with doublers of AA 2024-T3 with two configurations (riveted and with adhesive bonding) are analysed. The fatigue life of the substrate plates with cracks of 1, 2, 5, 10 and 12.7mm is computed using Fracture Analysis 3D (FRANC3D) tool. The stress intensity factors for the repaired AA 2024-T3 plates are computed for different crack lengths and compared using commercial FEA tool ABAQUS. The results for the bonded repairs showed significantly lower stress intensity factors compared with the riveted repairs. This improves the overall fatigue life of the bonded joint.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

On the use of NASGRO software to estimate fatigue crack growth under variable amplitude loading in aluminium alloy 2024-T351

This work uses the strip yield model implemented in NASGRO software to estimate fatigue life under random loading. Simulated results were compared with experimental data previously obtained by the authors using different random loading processes in Al2024-T351. Test data under constant amplitude loading from different authors have been considered in order to characterize the material behaviour and fit the model parameters. The two different strip yield model implemented in NASGRO software were considered. The ratio of simulated to experimental fatigue lives was between 0.71 and 1.52 considering all options and between 0.87 and 1.12 with the best option.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad DPI2012-33382Junta de Andalucía TEP-324

Residual Strength Predictions with Crack Buckling

Fracture tests were conducted on middle crack tension, M(T), and compact tension, C(T), specimens of varying widths, constructed from 0.063 inch thick sheets of 2024-T3 aluminum alloy. Guide plates were used to restrict out-of-plane displacements in about half of the tests. Analyses using the three-dimensional, elastic-plastic finite element code WARP3D simulated the tests with and without guide plates using a critical CTOA fracture criterion. The experimental results indicate that crack buckling reduced the failure loads by up to 40%. Using a critical CTOA value of 5.5 deg., the WARP3D analyses predicted the failure loads for the tests with guide plates within +/- 10% of the experimentally measured values. For the M(T) tests without guide plates, the WARP3D analyses predicted the failure loads for the 12 and 24 inch tests within 10%, while over predicting the failure loads for the 40 inch wide tests by about 20%

Quantitative Investigation of Surface and Subsurface Fatigue Cracks Near Rivets in Riveted Joints Using Acoustic, Electron and Optical Microscopy

Using scanning acoustic microscopy, optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, in conjunction with fractography of fractured surfaces, the crack formation and growth kinetics of subsurface fatigue cracks and surface breaking fatigue cracks near rivets have been characterized in detail in this research. The scanning acoustic microscope was used to quantitatively investigate subsurface fatigue cracks (even when they were very small) at and near countersunk rivets in riveted lap joint specimens that are similar to the riveted lap joints found in the fuselages of many aircraft. It was found that the maximum nominal applied stress influences the fatigue crack initiation and propagation behavior. Eyebrow type cracks develop at lower stresses and centerline cracks develop at higher stresses. At low stress ranges, the fatigue cracks initiate a short distance from the rivet at or near the hidden surface of the chamfered panel. At higher stress amplitudes, the cracks initiate at the blunt knife edge. Residual compressive stresses and fretting are suggested to play more important roles at lower stress ranges. Both types of cracks initiate in a shear mode but transform to tensile, mode I, cracks as they grow. This transition occurs much more rapidly at the higher stress amplitude. At both high and low stresses, the cracks are longer on the fayed surface of the panel than elsewhere. In a comparison of Alclad 2024-T3 and Ale lad 2524-T3, it was found that the high purity aluminum alloy 2524 nucleates cracks at a greater number of cycles than the less pure aluminum alloy 2024. At high stress, crack initiation plays less of a roll and the 2024 alloy has a longer life. The scanning acoustic microscope enabled us to study subsurface fatigue cracks. The understanding gained from the characterization of the subsurface fatigue cracks will help in the modeling of crack initiation and growth in the riveted lap joint and will also aid in the improvement of NDE techniques for the detection of these cracks. This novel technique for examining subsurface cracks will be useful in the study of subsurface cracks in other alloys

Residual Strength Prediction of Fuselage Structures with Multiple Site Damage

This paper summarizes recent results on simulating full-scale pressure tests of wide body, lap-jointed fuselage panels with multiple site damage (MSD). The crack tip opening angle (CTOA) fracture criterion and the FRANC3D/STAGS software program were used to analyze stable crack growth under conditions of general yielding. The link-up of multiple cracks and residual strength of damaged structures were predicted. Elastic-plastic finite element analysis based on the von Mises yield criterion and incremental flow theory with small strain assumption was used. A global-local modeling procedure was employed in the numerical analyses. Stress distributions from the numerical simulations are compared with strain gage measurements. Analysis results show that accurate representation of the load transfer through the rivets is crucial for the model to predict the stress distribution accurately. Predicted crack growth and residual strength are compared with test data. Observed and predicted results both indicate that the occurrence of small MSD cracks substantially reduces the residual strength. Modeling fatigue closure is essential to capture the fracture behavior during the early stable crack growth. Breakage of a tear strap can have a major influence on residual strength prediction

Comparing structural airframe maintenance strategies based on probabilistic estimates of the remaining useful service life

Structural airframe maintenance is a subset of aircraft maintenance, which is often performed at scheduled intervals to detect and repair cracks that would otherwise affect the safety of the aircraft. With the progress of structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques, which uses on-board sensors and actuators to assess damage status, condition-based maintenance (CBM) is considered as an alternative to traditional scheduled maintenance. By applying SHM techniques, CBM can access damages status as frequently as needed and unscheduled maintenance can be asked once the damage exceeds a particular threshold. Due to the harsh working environment and sensor limitation, the measurement data acquired from SHM is often quite noisy. In this paper, Extended Kalman filter is used to filer the noise to provide an accurate estimation of crack size and crack growth parameters together with their associated uncertainty. This knowledge is used to obtain a probabilistic estimate of the remaining useful service life of the structure. Based on these estimates, two maintenance philosophies are developed and further compared in terms of maintenance stop number or replaced panel number. The results indicate that both these two strategies reduce considerably the maintenance stop number compared to scheduled maintenance

Stable Tearing and Buckling Responses of Unstiffened Aluminum Shells with Long Cracks

The results of an analytical and experimental study of the nonlinear response of thin, unstiffened, aluminum cylindrical shells with a long longitudinal crack are presented. The shells are analyzed with a nonlinear shell analysis code that accurately accounts for global and local structural response phenomena. Results are presented for internal pressure and for axial compression loads. The effect of initial crack length on the initiation of stable crack growth and unstable crack growth in typical shells subjected to internal pressure loads is predicted using geometrically nonlinear elastic-plastic finite element analyses and the crack-tip-opening angle (CTOA) fracture criterion. The results of these analyses and of the experiments indicate that the pressure required to initiate stable crack growth and unstable crack growth in a shell subjected to internal pressure loads decreases as the initial crack length increases. The effects of crack length on the prebuckling, buckling and postbuckling responses of typical shells subjected to axial compression loads are also described. For this loading condition, the crack length was not allowed to increase as the load was increased. The results of the analyses and of the experiments indicate that the initial buckling load and collapse load for a shell subjected to axial compression loads decrease as the initial crack length increases. Initial buckling causes general instability or collapse of a shell for shorter initial crack lengths. Initial buckling is a stable local response mode for longer initial crack lengths. This stable local buckling response is followed by a stable postbuckling response, which is followed by general or overall instability of the shell