Abstract
New aeronautical technologies like the Airframe Digital Twin, Virtual Fatigue Testing, and Probabilistic Damage Tolerance Analysis require a very large number of crack growth evaluations with a comprehensive number of random variables in order to accurately predict the fatigue life, the structural risk, or the remaining useful life of a structure. Current state-of-the-art crack growth methodologies and probabilistic methods do not make these new technologies possible due to limitations on computational speed, number of random variables, and statistical tools. In this work, a new computational strategy is developed and demonstrated such that several random variables directly affecting the crack growth analysis can be considered. This approach provides the opportunity for a more comprehensive and accurate digital twin evaluation, virtual testing prediction, and risk assessment, hence, improving aircraft design, safety, and reliability.
Under Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Funding, This methodology focused on the development of an ultrafast numerical crack growth algorithm that consists of: (a) a constant amplitude equivalent stress derived from a variable amplitude loading spectrum, and (b) an adaptive step-size Runge-Kutta ordinary differential equation (ODE) solver.
Several examples with the Airframe Digital Twin, Virtual Fatigue Testing, and Probabilistic Damage Tolerance applications will be demonstrated using through, corner, and surface cracks at a hole under representative loading spectra. The crack size versus cycles results from this new approach will be compared against results obtained from commercial lifing software codes. All results to date indicate the comparison is within a few percent. The probabilistic crack growth analysis has been parallelized using OpenMP in order to fully utilize multi-core computers. This approach provides a more comprehensive and accurate risk assessment, hence, improving aircraft safety and reliability.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bogacki, P., Shampine, L.F.: An Efficient Runge-Kutta (4,5) Pair. Comput. Math. Appl. 32(6), 15–28 (1996)
Hovey, P.W., Berens, A.P., Loomis, J.S.: Update of the probability of fracture (PROF) computer program for aging aircraft risk analysis. Volume 1: Modifications and User’s Guide. Dayton Univ Oh Research Inst, November 1998. AFRL-VA-WP-TR-1999-3030
FAA: Fatigue Crack Growth Database for Damage Tolerance Analysis (2005). DOT/FAA/AR-05/15
Lincoln, J.W.: Method for computation of structural failure probability for an aircraft. Technical Report, DTIC Document (1980)
Liu, Y., Mahadevan, S.: Probabilistic fatigue life prediction using an equivalent initial flaw size distribution. Int. J. Fatigue 31, 476–487 (2008)
Millwater, H.R., Ocampo, J., Castaldo, T.: Probabilistic damage tolerance analysis for general aviation. Adv. Mater. Res. 891–892, 1191–1196 (2014)
Ocampo, J., Millwater, H., Crosby, N., Gamble, B., Hurst C., Nuss, M., Reyer, M., Mottaghi, S.: Probabilistic damage tolerance for aircraft fleets using the FAA-sponsored SMART|DT software. In: 29th Symposium International Conference on Aeronautical Fatigue, Japan (2017)
Tuegel, E.J., Ingraffea, A.R., Eason, T.G., Spottswood, S.M.: Reengineering aircraft structural life prediction using a digital twin. Int. J. Aerosp. Eng. (2011)
Wong, A: Blueprint TITANS: a roadmap towards the virtual fatigue test through a collaborative international effort. In: 29th Symposium International Conference on Aeronautical Fatigue, Japan (2017)
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to the Federal Aviation Administration for grant 16-G-005, which supports this research.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Ocampo, J. et al. (2020). An Ultrafast Crack Growth Lifing Model to Support Digital Twin, Virtual Testing, and Probabilistic Damage Tolerance Applications. In: Niepokolczycki, A., Komorowski, J. (eds) ICAF 2019 – Structural Integrity in the Age of Additive Manufacturing. ICAF 2019. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21503-3_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21503-3_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-21502-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-21503-3
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)