28th Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 23 - 28 September 2012, Brisbane, Australia
Paper ICAS 2012-8.2.3

MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE: JOINING THE DOTS FROM LORD KELVIN TO FIGHTER JET FATIGUE

A. K. Wong
Aircraft Structures, AVD, DSTO, Australia

Keywords: thermoelastic, stress, fatigue, fsft, fsdt

This paper revisits a powerful yet much overlooked stress analysis technique known as Thermoelastic Stress Analysis. Beginning with a historical perspective that traces the development of this technology, punctuated by a number of seemingly unrelated events in aeronautics, this paper gradually draws these links together to conclude that, instead of the odd application to validate computational models, this technology should be used systematically and persistently to monitor aircraft structures under fatigue testing. This would allow the reporting of any unanticipated hotspots or cracking at the earliest possible time so that re-analyses and fixes can be planned and designed well ahead of any actual failures.

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