Effective Durability and Damage Tolerance Training: New Methods for Modern Learners

Abstract

In the aeronautical industry, development of fundamental skills in durability and damage tolerance is critically important for most engineers engaged in structural design and analysis tasks. These skills are not usually well covered in most U.S. university undergraduate curricula, and individual coaching or on-the-job training are simply not efficient means of acquiring these skills at a basic level. An additional consideration is that the traditional classroom instruction formats are losing some of their effectiveness, as modern learners entering the workforce today have grown accustomed to a more hands-on style of learning. As a pilot program in transforming the Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) Structures Engineering New Hire (or foundational) training, we have recently rebuilt the introductory durability and damage tolerance (DaDT) portion of this curriculum, originally developed nearly 20 years ago, with a more learner-centric focus. The introductory DaDT syllabus covers the fundamentals of durability, fail-safety and damage tolerance, and how these principles are used at BCA. Boeing has thousands of engineers engaged in work that is pertinent to the structural integrity of our commercial airplanes. Many of these engineers go on to take more in-depth training in which they learn how to apply our proprietary DaDT methods. We have recently taken a new approach for this introductory course, which embraces modern learning methods as a means to increase student engagement and learning and knowledge/skill retention. In this paper we provide an overview of this endeavor and we share our learning architecture model, the perceived benefits, testimonials from learners, and our plans for the future.