A Brief History of Structural Fatigue Testing at Fishermans Bend Australia

Abstract

This paper presents a brief history of fatigue research at the Fishermans Bend Australia Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) facility from the early days in the 1940s when Mr. H.A. Wills, Head of the then Structures Division, foresaw with remarkable insight the emerging danger of fatigue in aircraft structures. He presented a historic paper at the Second International Aeronautical Conference in 1949 and instituted a comprehensive programme of research on the fatigue of materials and structures which proved to be invaluable within the next decade as fatigue failures began to plague first civil and then military aircraft fleets worldwide. DSTO is still amongst the world leaders on the fatigue of aircraft structures, as many of these research programmes have won international recognition and as fatigue investigations expeditiously undertaken for the RAAF (and at times civil regulators) have supplied valuable information to the aircraft manufacturers, operators and researchers.