A damage tolerance study conducted with structure relevant specimens

A preliminary investigation is reported of the development of a Structure Relevant (SR-) specimen, which maintains the essential features of a stiffened panel configuration, in order to study damage growth behavior at limited cost. Several SR-specimens were fabricated, damage was applied, either through impacts or by the insertion of artificial...

A CAD-system for the design of stiffened panels in wing box structures

In this paper the CAD system DESTIP is described. DESTIP is developed at the NLR for designing compression panels in wing box structures. Application of the system yields optimal panels in the sense that they meet all the requirements imposed by the designer and have minimum weight per unit width. Weight reductions ranging from 0 to 10% have...

Flight simulation fatigue crack propagation evaluation of candidate lower wing skin materials with particular consideration of spectrum truncation

Flight simulation fatigu-e crack propagation tests were carried out on 2024-T3, 7475-T761 and mill annealed Ti-6A1-4V sheet in thicknesses up to 3 miri and representative for transport aircraft lower wing skin stiffened panels of end load capacities 1.5 and 3 MN/m. The performance of 2024-T3 was much superior, owing mainly to greater retardation...