Assignment 1

Human Factor Engineering

Muhammad Kamal

Aero-10

110101021

The DeHavilland Comet Crash

Case Study
The DeHavilland Comet was the first production commercial jet airliner that went into
service in 1952. The earliest production aircraft designated G-ALYP was loaned to the
British Overseas Airways Company and inaugurated the first scheduled overseas flight from
London to Johannesburg with fare-paying customers on-board. Much of the design is
similar to the commercial airliners seen around the world today. The Comet had four
turbojet engines (turbofan are now the norm for reduced noise and better fuel economy),
which made the aircraft much more efficient at higher altitudes of flight than its propellerdriven contemporaries. Furthermore, it featured an internally pressurised fuselage/cabin
and also pioneered design elements which were unusual at the time such as backward-swept
wings, integral wing fuel tanks and a four-wheel bogie undercarriage (1). Unfortunately, the
DeHavilland Comet also influenced modern aircraft design by two catastrophic failures.
Within two years of entering service two of the Comet fleet fell apart during ascent to cruise
altitude with a total loss of the aircrafts and the death of 56 passengers. The first production
aircraft G-ALYP, scheduled on BOAC Flight 781 from Rome Ciampino to London Heathrow,
was lost on January 10, 1954 by the fuselage breaking up in mid-air 20 minutes after taking
off. BOAC voluntarily grounded its fleet and engineers suggested 60 immediate
modifications to the design to rectify some of the design flaws that were believed to have
caused the accident (2). Comet flights resumed on March 23, 1954 but only two weeks later
on April 8, 1954 Comet G-ALYY, on the chartered South African Airways Flight 201 from
Rome Ciampino to Cairo, again crashed into the Mediterranean sea within 30 minutes of
take-off. The entire Comet 1 fleet was then grounded, its Certificate of Airworthiness
revoked and the line production at DeHavilland in Hatfield suspended.
A number of investigations followed led by Sir Arnold Hall at the Royal Aeronautical
Establishment in Farnborough, UK. Most critically this included a full-scale cyclic internal
pressurisation test of the fuselage in a water tank of the aircraft G-ALYU removed from
service for this purpose. G-ALYU had accumulated 1221 internal pressurisation cycles in
service and after a further 1836 cycles in the water tank the cabin ripped open after a prooftest loading 33% higher than the nominal pressurisation cycle loading (2). Evidence of
fatigue cracking was found that originated from the aft lower corner of the forward escape

hatch and also from the right-hand aft corner of the windows illustrated in Figures 1 and 2
below.

Fig. 1. Failure origin in Comet G-ALYU around escape hatch (1, 2).

Fig. 2. Failure origin of Comet G-ALYU around square windows (1, 2).

Both of these locations feature sharp right hand corners which cause local areas of high
stress-concentration that provide very benign conditions for crack initiation and
propagation under fatigue loading. Furthermore, circular cylindrical structures, such as the
aircraft fuselage, develop internal membrane stresses (constant through the thickness) to
resist the internal pressure loads. As a result of the curved shape of the fuselage these forces
induce secondary out-of-plane bending moments acting to straighten-out the curvature.
In addition, the stress concentration around the the escape hatch and window cutouts was
exacerbated by countersunk bolt holes creating a knife-edge in both the primary skin and
doubler reinforcement (Figure 3) (2). Swift (1987) has argued that the shell structure would
have had enough residual strength to sustain large and easily detectable cracks if they had
grown midway between two window cutouts. However, cracks that grew across a bay from
one cutout to the next would not be tolerable and result in ultimate failure of the structure.

Fig. 3. Failure origin of Comet G-ALYU around countersunk bolt holes (1, 2).

Lessons Learned
The most notable lesson learned from the Comet disaster is that viewing windows are no
longer designed square but with rounded edges to reduce any stress concentrations.
Another immediate lessons is that crack-stoppers are now placed between frame-cutouts
that take the shape of circumferential stiffeners that break-up the fuselage into multiple
sections and thus prevent the crack from propagating from one window to the next. Most
importantly however, before and during the Comet era the aircraft design philosophy was
predominantly SAFE-LIFE, which means that the structure was designed to sustain the
required fatigue life with no initial damage and no accumulation of damage during service
e.g. cracking (1). The Comet accidents showed that around stress concentration cracks
would initiate and propagate much earlier than expected, such that safety could not be
universally guaranteed in the SAFE-LIFE approach without uneconomically short aircraft
service lives.
For this reason the FAIL-SAFE design philosophy was developed in the late 1950s. All
materials are assumed to contain a finite initial defect size before entering service that may
grow due to fatigue loading in-service. The aircraft structure is thus designed to sustain
structural damage without compromising safety up to a critical damage size that can be
easily detected by visual inspection between flights. All inspections are coupled with crack
propagation calculations that guarantee that an observed crack is not susceptible to grow to
the critical size between two inspection cycles, in which case adequate repair is performed.
Furthermore, the structure is designed to be damage tolerant with multiple load paths and
built-in redundancies that impart residual strength to the aircraft in case the primary
structure is compromised in-service.

References
(1) R.J.H Wanhill (2002). Milestone Case Histories in Aircraft Structural Design. National
Aerospace Laboratory. NLR-TP-2002-521
(2) T. Swift (1987). Damage tolerance in pressurised fuselages. 11th Plantema Memorial
Lecture. New Materials and Fatigue Resistant Aircraft Design (ed. D L Simpson) pp 1 7.
Engineering Materials Advisory Services Ltd., Warley, UK.