Procedures For Aircraft Structural Teardown Analysis: Development Of A Best Practices Handbook

Safely sustaining the ever-increasing numbers of aging aircraft in the United States Air Force (USAF) has brought a correspondingly increased demand to determine the true condition of service-aged aircraft structural components. The only means available to precisely determine the damage state of a given structure is by what is commonly referred to as a “teardown inspection” of that structure. A very large number of these teardown programs have been executed in recent years. These include: A-10, AV-8B, B-2, B-52, B-727, C-5, C-17, C-130, C-141, EC-135, F-15, F-16, F-22, F-111, KC-130, P-3, T-37, T-38, VC-10 and numerous civil and general aviation aircraft. Unfortunately, there is little to no cross talk between organizations performing teardown programs. The lack of communication limits the sharing of lessons learned and best practices developed during the course of each program.

The USAF Academy's Center for Aircraft Structural Life Extension (CAStLE) was tasked by the 77th Aeronautical System Wing, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio to prepare a handbook which documents task-by-task procedures for planning and executing an aircraft structural teardown program. CAStLE was further tasked to, wherever possible; include lessons learned from past programs in this handbook. The resulting handbook was published as “USAFA-TR-2008, Procedures for Aircraft Structural Teardown Analysis” in early 2008. The handbook chapters address all teardown tasks from setting program goals and requirements through the analysis of the resulting teardown program findings. This work presents a brief summary of the best practices handbook chapters and highlights some of the more critical aspects of each.