Hill Engineering is presenting about residual stress engineering to support fleet management and life extensions of legacy fleets at the upcoming 2017 Aircraft Airworthiness & Sustainment Conference (AA&S) in Phoenix, AZ. The mission of this conference is to identify the challenges and the collaborative work being done within the aerospace community in improving the safety, airworthiness, availability and cost effectiveness of both our military and commercial aircraft fleets. Hill Engineering’s presentation will include a summary of recent work in airframe structures, demonstrating the use of residual stress engineering tools to support design and sustainment. The abstract text is presented below.
Recent advances in residual stress engineering enable more precise estimates of useful life and support the use of residual stress processing for life extension of fatigue-critical components. With next generation aircraft fleets on the horizon, sustainment of current fleets is a pressing need, particularly for military aircraft filling a range of roles. The degradation of metallic materials by fatigue crack initiation and growth drives programs of fleet inspections and component replacements that provide safety. Known as residual stresses, the stress fields built into parts at manufacture can significantly affect fatigue, often changing crack growth life by a factor from 2 to 10.
The presentation provides a description of recent work to develop technologies that improve the engineering of residual stress fields. These technologies include methods to estimate residual stress fields using modeling, validate models with measurements, and correlate fatigue performance using residual stress data. Examples of recent work in airframe structures demonstrate the use of residual stress engineering tools in addressing manufacturing challenges and providing fatigue life extension.
If you are planning to attend the conference please stop by to discuss Hill Engineering’s capabilities in fatigue analysis and design and residual stress measurements. Please contact us for more information.