Assignment W14-01

Design Philosophies
MUHAMMAD HAZIM PUTRA BIN AZMI
 SAFE-LIFE

In safe-life design, products are intended to be removed from service at a specific design life.

Safe–life is particularly relevant to simple metal aircraft, where airframe components are subjected to alternating loads over the lifetime of the aircraft which
makes them susceptible to metal fatigue. In certain areas such as in wing or tail components, structural failure in flight would be catastrophic.

The safe-life design technique is employed in critical systems which are either very difficult to repair or whose failure may cause severe damage to life and
property. These systems are designed to work for years without requirement of any repairs.

The disadvantage of the safe–life design philosophy is that serious assumptions must be made regarding the alternating loads imposed on the aircraft, so if
those assumptions prove to be inaccurate, cracks may commence prior to the component being removed from service. To counter this disadvantage,
alternative design philosophies like fail-safe design and damage-tolerant design were developed.

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 FAIL-SAFE
o In engineering, a fail-safe is a design feature or practice that in the event of a specific type of failure, inherently responds in a way that will cause no
or minimal harm to other equipment, to the environment or to people.

o Unlike inherent safety to a particular hazard, a system being "fail-safe" does not mean that failure is impossible or improbable, but rather that the
system's design prevents or mitigates unsafe consequences of the system's failure. That is, if and when a "fail-safe" system fails, it remains at least as
safe as it was before the failure.

o Since many types of failure are possible, failure mode and effects analysis is used to examine failure situations and recommend safety design and
procedures.

o Some systems can never be made fail-safe, as continuous availability is needed. Redundancy, fault tolerance, or recovery procedures are used for
these situations (e.g. multiple independently controlled and fuel-fed engines).

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DAMAGE TOLERANCE
DESIGN
o Damage tolerance is a property of a structure relating to its ability to
sustain defects safely until repair can be effected.
o The approach to engineering design to account for damage tolerance is
based on the assumption that flaws can exist in any structure and such
flaws propagate with usage.
o This approach is commonly used in aerospace engineering, mechanical
engineering, and civil engineering to manage the extension of cracks in
structure through the application of the principles of fracture mechanics.

o In engineering, a structure is considered to be damage tolerant if a

maintenance program has been implemented that will result in the
detection and repair of accidental damage, corrosion and fatigue cracking
before such damage reduces the residual strength of the structure below
an acceptable limit.

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DAMAGE TOLERANCE
ANALYSIS
In ensuring the continued safe operation of the damage tolerant structure,
inspection schedules are devised. This schedule is based on many criteria,
including: These factors affect how long the
o assumed initial damaged condition of the structure structure may operate normally in
o stresses in the structure (both fatigue and operational maximum stresses) the damaged condition before
that cause crack growth from the damaged condition one or more inspection intervals
o geometry of the material which intensifies or reduces the stresses on has the opportunity to discover
the crack tip the damaged state and effect a
repair.
o ability of the material to withstand cracking due to stresses in the expected
environment
The interval between inspections
o largest crack size that the structure can endure before catastrophic failure must be selected with a certain
o likelihood that a particular inspection method will reveal a crack minimum safety, and also must
o acceptable level of risk that a certain structure will be completely failed balance the expense of the
o expected duration after manufacture until a detectable crack will form inspections, the weight penalty of
o assumption of failure in adjacent components which may have the effect of lowering fatigue stresses, and the
changing stresses in the structure of interest opportunity costs associated with
a structure being out of service for
5 maintenance.