|
|
|
| Abstract Title:
|
| Rotorcraft Damage Tolerance Risk Assessment and Management
|
| Graduate Student Presenter:
|
Christopher Shantz
|
| Name of the Author(s) and Affiliation(s):
|
Christopher Shantz, Vanderbilt University; Liming Liu, Vanderbilt University; Xinyu Chen, Vanderbilt University; Yongming Liu, Clarkson University; Sankaran Mahadevan, Vanderbilt University.
|
The traditional damage tolerance approach to aerospace structures assumes a deterministic damage accumulation process where deterministic crack growth curves, constant material properties, and specific initial flaw sizes are used. However, the fatigue damage accumulation process is stochastic in nature. The probabilistic method is more appropriate since it can properly account for various uncertainties and assist the decision-making process with respect to design and maintenance scheduling.
The overall objectives of the project are to develop, validate, and implement a general risk assessment and management methodology for rotorcraft damage tolerance. The project is composed of four major objectives. Objective 1 will investigate the uncertainties in the various input quantities to the damage tolerance methodology. Uncertainties include material properties, loading spectra, structural geometry, manufacturing process variables, and environmental effects. Objective 2 will focus on uncertainty propagation to component/structural level and will integrate computational methods, fracture mechanics, and random process theory to develop a suitable methodology to evaluate the effects of uncertainty propagation on fatigue life prediction. Objective 3 will concentrate on risk assessment at system level and will develop an efficient and accurate methodology for damage tolerance reliability estimation and will implement a reliability-based inspection optimization (RBIO) framework for system management. Objective 4 will quantify modeling errors associated with the previous objectives and will include these errors within the previously developed reliability analysis.
The methods will be applied to rotorcraft structural components in collaboration with Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. The project is funded by the Federal Aviation Administration.
|
|
|
