Structural & vibration testing

// GRAHAM JARVIS

1 // Damage to PW4000
hollow fan blades from
United Airlines Flight
328 in 2021, with
fractures near the hub
(Photo: NTSB)

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 Structural & vibration testing

Engineers continue to refine fatigue

testing technologies and techniques
to improve safety and save lives

Finding
Fractures
S tructural and fatigue testing ensures
that aviation accidents, which can
have fatal consequences don’t occur.
Take, for example, Aloha Airlines
Flight 243 in 1988 between Hilo and Honolulu in Hawaii.
During the flight, the Boeing 737-297 suffered extensive
damage after an explosive decompression in flight.
Investigations blamed the incident on poor maintenance
and metal fatigue.
Fortunately the pilots were able to land the aircraft
safely. However the incident resulted in the death of a
flight attendant and injuries to passengers and crew. The
event had far-reaching consequences for aviation safety
and procedures.
A more recent incident in 2021 illustrates the risks in
aircraft engines, when one of the PW4000s powering a
United Airlines 777 failed shortly after take-off from
Denver, USA showering debris over nearby cities. No one
was injured and the aircraft safely returned to the
airport. The National Transportation Safety Board

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 Structural & vibration testing

(NTSB) identified the cause of

the engine failure to be two
fan blades in the engine
which had cracked because of
metal fatigue. As a result, the
FAA ordered immediate
inspections of 777s equipped
with PW4000 engines before
any further flights.
As a result, modifications
were made to the PW4000
engines, including the
installation of debris shields
to the engine inlet and
increased inspections, with
the aircraft returning to the
air during 2022.

FUTURE OF SAFETY
John Downer is an associate
professor in science and
technology studies at the
University of Bristol and
author of the book ‘Rational
Accidents - Reckoning with
Catastrophic Technologies’.
He says, “The extreme levels
of reliability that we expect
from airliners pose different
challenges to the normal reliability we expect of
almost any other system. This is because
designing a system that won’t fail frequently
requires engineers to understand how it will
function – and thus fail to function.
“Engineers cannot just wait for aircraft to crash to
learn how reliable they are! The effort required to
achieve extreme reliability does not scale proportionally
with the desired level of safety. For instance, doubling
the reliability of a complex system requires more than
double the effort.”
Thankfully, civil aviation accidents are extremely
rare. Most of them are not caused by structural failure
2 // Inboard side of the right
engine of United Airlines Flight
328 with the exposed fan
containment wrap in brown and
fire damage to the thrust
reversers (Photo: NTSB)
2
and metal fatigue – the most common cause is operator
error. Yet engineering failures do occur. Metal and parts
fatigue are a potential risk that needs managing. Downer
says, “Fatigue is extremely complicated. It is a thorn in
the aerospace industry’s paw.”
LIMIT OF VALIDITY REGULATION
Marcel Bos, head of aerospace vehicles integrity and the
lifecycle support department at the Royal Netherlands
Aerospace Centre (NLR), says, “Sometimes the
fatigue-critical location is hard to inspect, so
investigators don’t notice any metal fatigue. After the
Aloha accident, the Limit of Validity [LoV] Regulation
was imposed by the FAA and EASA.
“An aircraft may not be operated beyond a certified
number of flight hours and flight cycles. The problem is

“Fatigue life is a function of that if you fly long enough, small imperfections may lead
to widespread fatigue damage.”

component loading, geometry,

He and his colleague Emiel Amsterdam, senior
scientist at NLR see LoV as the most important outcome
of the Aloha and United Airlines incidents. Once the LoV
and the material’s resistance has been reached, airworthiness authorities require
further substantiation based on test evidence and fatigue

to fatigue failure” and damage tolerance analysis for the aircraft to be

permitted to fly. “This involves mandatory inspections
for fatigue damage. Extending the LoV involves
ANDREW HALFPENNY, DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY – maintenance actions designed to support the extension,”
FATIGUE AND FRACTURE, HOTTINGER BRUEL & KJAER he says.

LOAD SPECTRUM ANALYSIS

As well as structural and fatigue testing, Andrew
Halfpenny, director of technology – fatigue and fracture

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3 // The NTSB conducted
3
inspections of United Airlines
Flight 328 in a hangar at Denver
at Hottinger Bruel & Kjaer believes
there is a need to consider the load spectrum. “In
the case of Aloha Airlines, the load spectrum was a
key contributor to the failure,” he says.
The inspection levels for the 737-297 aircraft were
established by Boeing based on flight hours completed.
As this type of aircraft was used for frequent short
flights, he explains they accumulated considerably more
ground-air-ground pressure cycles. This can drive fatigue
in the fuselage.
“The trouble was that the inspection intervals were
inadequately specified. Common and subsequent practice
nowadays is to specify inspection periods in terms of
both flight hours and the number of flights.”
He adds that aircraft and their components are
qualified for fatigue using the “Design, Verification, and
Validation” process. Modeling is used to consider which
materials to use, and it helps to determine how big the
components should be to resist loads.
Later, as the design progresses more sophisticated
models are used to consider how a component reacts to
its environment and to consider structural and
vibration loading, temperature ranges, corrosion and
ultraviolet effects.
The mathematical models require the input of
parameters to correctly represent the materials used –
often derived from parametric tests. “In the case of
fatigue, these tests include material static and fatigue
parameters and parameters that model the fatigue of
joins, such as the fatigue properties of adhesives and
riveted joints,” Halfpenny says.
Structural & vibration testing
VERIFYING REALITY
Verification determines whether the right product is
being designed and whether the design model represents
reality. Validation also considers if the right product is
being designed, but asks, for example: “Will it do what it
is meant to for as long as it needs to?”
Qualification tests then ensure that the components
will perform acceptably throughout their design life.
International Airport Furthermore, there is a need to analyze any design
(Photo: NTSB) weaknesses when components are combined into large
systems – a field generally known as systems
engineering. This assesses the interaction between
different components to establish how incompatibilities
might affect the overall life and reliability of the aircraft.
Halfpenny says, “Fatigue life is a function of
component loading, geometry and the material’s
resistance to fatigue failure.”
In the Aloha Airlines case loading, defined as the
force on a component included cabin pressure
fluctuations during ground-air cycles. Other loads that
can affect an aircraft include air turbulence, taxi,
take-off, and landing loads.
Full-scale fatigue tests of aircraft can also validate
computer modeling, and the data used to consider
possible operational scenarios. These simulations can be
“Fatigue is extremely
complicated. It’s a thorn in
the aerospace industry’s paw”
JOHN DOWNER, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY STUDIES, THE UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL
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 Structural & vibration testing

4/5 // Australian and US

engineers partnered to
develop a full scale three
degrees-of-freedom dynamic
5 test rig for helicopters
(Photos: DSGT)

NEW APPROACH HELPS MODEL LANDING

combined with analysis to evaluate other
usage scenarios that may occur in the future.
The key aim is to ensure that everything
will fail safe, so if one element of a structure
fails, the other takes over. Amsterdam says this
could include crack arrest features that will stop 6 microstructure, roughness, and residual stresses at
or slow down a growing fatigue crack. Essentially,
they say it’s a matter of designing the structure so that
you can detect the cracks: “Safety by inspection!”
DESIGN OPTIMIZATION
The results of structural and fatigue testing are fed into
design optimization and improvements in aircraft and
aircraft parts maintenance. James Roy, senior
engineer at consultants Airframe Designs
explains that testing early on in a development
program allows findings to be incorporated 6 // James Roy,
senior engineer,
into the design before production, avoiding Airframe Designs
costly rework and so-called
over-engineering. “For example, the Aloha 7 // Diagrams showing fatigue
737 featured a cold-bonded doubler, simulation of an aircraft front
susceptible to the marine environment and landing gear system
(Image: HBK)
‘island-hopping’ flights,” he says.
The Defence Science and Technology Group
(DSTG) of Australia’s Department of Defence says
advances in aircraft structural design, aviation safety
regulation, and structural integrity programs continue to
improve safety outcomes. Like in civil aviation, the
integrity of structural design is paramount in defense.
The DSTG says, “In the design phase, material and
processes undergo loads and spectra development. Stress
and fatigue analysis are complemented by comprehensive
structural testing. Once in service, the usage of aircraft is
carefully monitored so changes in airframe and engine
load spectra can be identified. Periodic assessments serve
to confirm the validity of airworthiness limits and
maintenance programs.”
GEAR FATIGUE FOR US AIR FORCE
As of October 2021, the average age of aircraft across the
entire United States Air Force (USAF) fleet was 29.1 years,
with some aircraft averaging more than 60 years. Many
of these aircraft have been maintained well beyond their
original design life.
USAF landing gear undergoes surface treatments
multiple times to protect them against the environment
and control their dimensionality. The high strength
materials used show little signs of cracking before
catastrophic failure. The treatments also affect the
the surface. While protecting against corrosion, the
treatments can have a detrimental effect on fatigue life.
These effects were not considered in legacy designs.
A project is underway to develop a database of
material and surface treatment fatigue properties using
strain-life fatigue testing and surface finish factor changes.
The project has derived a method for modeling the
surface treatment effects on a material. The first three
landing gear materials have been tested with a total of 26
different treatments, and over 500 fatigue tests so far.
Positive conclusions from the work include increased
confidence in life extension for aging aircraft landing
gear components, the timely removal of landing gear
components from service to decrease the risk of failure
and the potential for improvements to repetitive overhaul
processes to reduce their negative impact on fatigue life.
7

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 Structural & vibration testing
9
9/10 // These parts are
from the structural analysis
carried out by Airframe Designs
for a human external load cargo
carrying hook for the Bell 429
helicopter (Image: Airframe
Designs)
VIBRATION TESTING AND FATIGUE
One of the common ways of fatigue testing aircraft components is
vibration testing. This involves subjecting the components to different
frequencies and amplitudes of vibration to induce stress and strain.
Engineers use vibration testing to reveal the natural frequencies,
damping factors, and resonant modes of components, as well as their
fatigue strength and endurance limit. The tools used for vibration
testing can include shakers, accelerometers, sensors, and data
acquisition systems.
Vibration fatigue is caused by forced vibration of a random nature.
When a structure is excited by for example a shaker, it responds
according to its natural-dynamics modes, which results in a dynamic
stress load at the material points.
Modal analysis is used to expose the natural modes and frequencies
of the vibrating structure and accurately predict the local stress
responses for the given excitation. When the stress responses are
known, vibration fatigue can be successfully characterized.
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8 // Aloha Airlines Flight
243 in 1988 is one of the major
incidents that led the industry to
change its approach to
inspecting ageing aircraft
(Photo: NTSB)
Along with domestic and international partners, the
8 DSTG is studying fatigue-resistant materials,
advancements in manufacturing processes, improved
accuracy in flight load measurement and analysis, and
advancements in fatigue modeling and testing. This
includes new full-scale fatigue test technologies in a joint
Australian-US Helicopter Advanced Fatigue Test – Test
Demonstrator (HAFT-TD) program.
INCREASING DIGITALIZATION
Bos and Amsterdam highlight increasing digitalization of
structural and fatigue testing as a way to increase the
accuracy of fatigue testing. Sensors and cameras are
being fitted to aircraft to monitor aircraft systems and
components during flight. Test rigs also use sensors that
permit more data to be collected and analyzed than
previously possible. Aircraft health monitoring sensors
identify faults more frequently.
While they do not remove the need for human
inspections, health monitoring can be used to better
1 determine when inspection and / or maintenance is
required. Structural Health Monitoring is divided into
diagnostic techniques to detect the early symptoms of
failure and prognostic techniques, such as aircraft
fatigue sensors, and monitor input loads.
The digitalization of structural and fatigue testing
will enable the industry to improve with better sensors
and load controllers and digital twinning. Yet there will
still need to be much testing and research. For example,
10 NLR is studying fatigue with OEMs such as Airbus and
Fokker GKN.
The key to safety remains transparency and a
willingness to share data and experiences. Testing not
only saves money but also lives, with technology playing
an increasingly important role in ensuring test outcomes
are accurate. Without accuracy, cracks and structural
weaknesses could still cause catastrophic accidents. \\
“If you fly long enough,
small imperfections
may lead to widespread
fatigue damage”
MARCEL BOS, HEAD OF AEROSPACE VEHICLES INTEGRITY
AND THE LIFE CYCLE SUPPORT DEPARTMENT, NLR