Abstract
One of the most important problems in fatigue analysis and design of aircraft structures is the prediction of fatigue crack growth in service. Available in‐service inspection data for various types of aircraft indicate that the fatigue crack damage accumulation in service involves considerable statistical variability. In this paper, we consider the problem of estimating the minimum time to crack initiation (or warranty period) for a number of aircraft structural components, before which no cracks (that may be detected) in materials occur, based on the results of previous warranty period tests on the structural components in question. This problem is a special case of a general class of problems concerned with the analysis of fatigue crack damage accumulation in aircraft service. The technique proposed here for solving this problem emphasizes pivotal quantities relevant for obtaining ancillary statistics. Attention is restricted to invariant families of distributions. Numerical examples are given.
Highlights
Maintaining high reliability for these structures generally requires that the individual structural components have extremely high reliability, even after long periods of time
We consider in this paper the problem of estimating the minimum time to crack initiation for a number of aircraft structural components, before which no cracks in materials occur, based on the results of previous warranty period tests on the structural components in question
If in a fleet of k aircraft there are km of the same individual structural components, operating independently, the length of time until the first crack initially forms in any of these components is of basic interest and provides a measure of assurance concerning the operation of the components in question
Summary
If in a fleet of k aircraft there are km of the same individual structural components, operating independently, the length of time until the first crack initially forms in any of these components is of basic interest and provides a measure of assurance concerning the operation of the components in question. This leads to the consideration of the following problem. The analysis of the problem considered here is seen to be invariant under changes of location and scale
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