Course Description & Outline:
This five-day course is designed to prepare participating engineers to meet the challenges of finding compliance to the Aging Aircraft Safety Rule (AASR) including the new Part 26 requirements, by providing fundamental knowledge of fatigue and fracture mechanics and the tools necessary to conduct accurate fatigue and damage tolerance analyses. Concepts of fatigue, fracture mechanics and damage tolerance in aerospace structures are presented. Subjects include the following: evolution of requirements for preventing fatigue damage, fatigue mechanism, stress concentrations, fatigue properties, fatigue strength, damage accumulation, stress intensity factor, crack growth, residual strength plus failure criterion, constant and variable amplitude loading, load spectra, inspection techniques. Analytical and numerical approaches to fatigue and damage tolerance in metallic structures is also discussed in detail.