Fatigue of Aeronautical Structures

COURSE CONTENT

Aeronautical materials – Fundamental aspects of fatigue – Woehler curves – Fatigue mechanisms – Design concepts – Damage tolerance design – Fatigue fracture characteristics – Fatigue crack growth under constant amplitude loading – Effect of overloads & underloads on the fatigue crack growth behavior – Fatigue crack growth under variable and real loading conditions – Multi-site damage and ageing aircraft – Structural integrity – Environmental effects (corrosion, temperature) on the fatigue behavior of aeronautical materials – Fatigue of aircraft structures.

LERANING OUTCOMES

The students attending this course gain the basic knowledge of fatigue and the Woehler curves regarding the materials used in aircrafts. They study the design concepts, the damage tolerance design, the fatigue mechanisms, the fatigue fracture surfaces, the fatigue crack growth, the multi-site damage and the ageing aircraft, the structural integrity and the environmental effects as well as the fatigue of aircraft structures.

This knowledge is necessary and is used in many courses of Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics, such as Introduction to Composite Materials, Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Finite Elements for Structural Analysis, Mechanics of Composite Materials etc.

The learning outcomes of this course correspond to the descriptive indicator 8, according to the European Qualifications Framework.