M. Yanishevsky, E. Ferko, R. Sabourin

The Canadian Forces are collaborating with the United States Navy, the Royal Australian Air Force, and the Royal Netherlands Navy on the P-3C Orion I CP!40 Aurora Service Life Assessment Program in order to determine what measures will have to be undertaken to allow Canada to continue operating the CP 140 fleet of aircraft to the year 2025 safely and economically. As part of the program, components simulating regions of the aircraft, which based on analysis have low fatigue lives, were designed and manufactured. Strain gauges were installed in strategic areas to ensure that a representative strain distribution was induced in the components and to scale the loading spectrum to the same strain levels as the P-3C full-scale test. The goals of the tests were to establish the fatigue lives of the assemblies, determine critical details of the centre and outer wing, identify where fatigue cracks will develop naturally, monitor their crack growth characteristics, and determine the effectiveness of cold expansion as a hole fatigue enhancement option. As well, the tests provided a measure of the damage and crack detection capability of in-service NOT inspection techniques. Testing of components representative of the lower front spar caps at the centre wing to outer wing splice and the outer wing near the inner nacelle locations was completed. The data were used to effectively anticipate damage in the P-3C Full Scale Test article. A series of coupon level tests were further undertaken to determine the life improvement potential of cold expanding pre-fatigued web material holes with residual cracks representative of areas with limited fatigue lives in the outer wing for both "normal" and low edge distance configurations, since these areas showed vulnerability to Multiple Site I Widespread Fatigue Damage. The positive results from these tests have led to a second outer wing component being tested to establish the potential of hole cold expansion to prolong the life in previously determined fatigue critical areas. In this latter test, following the introduction of simulated service usage to simulate the state of fatigue damage at the time when hole cold expansion may be implemented in the CF CP140 fleet, the component will be fully inspected, fastener holes will be cold expanded by the Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) contractor and then spectrum fatigue tested to establish the potential effectiveness of this option for implementation on the CP140 fleet.

23rd ICAF Symposium of the international Committee on Aeronautical Fatique, 2005, Hamburg

Conference Poster

englisch

A5, 12 Seiten

DGLR-Bericht, 2005, 2005-03, 23rd ICAF Symposium of the international Committee on Aeronautical Fatique - Proceedings; S.601-612; 2005; Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt - Lilienthal-Oberth e.V., Bonn

NA

fatigue, P3 aircraft, cp140 aircraft

Bestellbar

2005