Detection and Quantification of Fatigue Damage in Aircraft Structural Components

摘要

Retirement criteria for many structural components and particularly landing gear structural parts, are generally based on analytical fatigue methods because the current means of detecting actual component damage cannot detect sufficiently small levels of damage such that safe operation for a useful interval can be confidently determined; limiting the capability to apply damage tolerance methods. The testing completed in these projects demonstrated that Induced Positron Analysis (IPA) technologies are sensitive to the tensile plastic strain damage induced in aerospace material specimens and components. The IPA process has shown that IPA methods can reliably detect and quantify plastic strain and plastic deformation under simulated and operational conditions. A preliminary functional relationship between total strain and the normalized IPA S parameter has been developed for several aerospace materials. The fatigue testing has demonstrated the IPA technologies have potential to detect fatigue damage induced in specimens and operational components when the loads are large enough to cause plastic deformation.