Determination of inspection interval for aircraft structures using Stochastic Approaches

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In order to guarantee the safety of the aircraft, the damage tolerance concept is widely used, which assumes that initial crack exists and is used to determine the appropriate inspection scheme for maintenance. Traditional method like ASIP (Aircraft Structure Integrity Program) to determine inspection interval is however deterministic which cannot consider the variability of the parameters in crack growth model. To overcome this, probabilistic methods have been studied and published in a number of literatures. In this study, inspection interval is determined for critical points undergoing the crack growth over repeated flights in aircraft structures. In terms of stochastic crack growth models, there have been two approaches: one using analytical model developed by Yang and Manning et al. and the other using simulation by Grooteman. The two approaches are implemented respectively, from which the pros and cons are examined in the aspects of efficiency, safety and overall availability.