A Review of Structural Durability and Probabilistic Damage Tolerance

The main purpose of this paper is providing a reference for further research. According to the papers and reports on structural durability and probabilistic damage tolerance, the present paper summarized the pro- gress of the theoretical considerations and engineering application. Several models used in structural durability and probabilistic damage tolerance are reviewed. The characteristics and problems of these methods are ana- lyzed. A new kind of combined analysis model on structural durability and damage tolerance are also introduced. New progress of analysis theory and numerical methods on structural reliability are discussed, such as the re- sponse surface method and numerical method combining neural networks and Monte Carlo simulation. The analy- sis shows that these methods can improve computational efficiency significantly and maintain high computational accuracy. Finally, some prospects of the key research directions are discussed.

Review of the development of the probabilistic damage tolerance assessment of life-limited parts in compliance with the airworthiness regulations

Probabilistic damage tolerance is a critical method to understand and communicate risk and safety.This paper reviews recent research on the probabilistic damage tolerance design for life-limited parts.The vision of the probabilistic damage tolerance assessment is provided.Five core parts of the probabilistic damage tolerance method are introduced separately,including the anomaly distribution,stress processing and zone definition,fatigue and fracture calculation method,probability of failure(POF)calculation method,and the combination with residual stress induced by the manufacturing process.The above currently-available risk assessment methods provide practical tools for failure risk predictions and are applied by the airworthiness regulations.However,new problems are exposed with the development of the aeroengines.The time-consuming anomaly distribution derivation process restricts the development of the anomaly distribution,especially for the developing aviation industries with little empirical data.Additionally,the strong transient characteristic is prominent because of the significant temperature differences during the take-off and climbing periods.The complex loads then challenge the fatigue and fracture calculation model.Besides,high computational efficiency is required because various variables are considered to calculate the POF.Therefore,new technologies for the probabilistic damage tolerance assessment are provided,including the efficient anomaly distribution acquisition method based on small samples,the zone definition method considering transient process,and stress intensity factor(SIF)solutions under arbitrary stress distributions combined with the machine learning method.Then,an efficient numerical integration method for calculating failure risk based on the probability density evolution theory is proposed.Meanwhile,the influence of the manufacturing process on residual stress and the failure risk of the rotors is explored.The development of the probabilistic damage tolerance method can meet the requirement of the published airworthiness regulation Federal Aviation Regulation(FAR)33.70 and guide the modification or amendment of new regulations to ensure the safety of the high-energy rotors.

DAMAGE DETECTION FOR COMPOSITE STRUCTURE UNDER TEMPERATURE CHANGES USING LAMB WAVES

A two-step method is proposed for detection and identification of invisible impact damage in composite structure under temperature changes using Lamb waves.First,a statistical outlier analysis is employed to distinguish whether the changes of Lamb wave signals are induced by damage within a monitoring area or are only affected by temperature changes.Damage indices are defined after the Lamb wave signals are processed by Fourier transform,and a Monte Carlo procedure is used to obtain the damage threshold value for the damage indices at the undamaged state.If the damage indices in the operation state exceed the threshold value,the presence of damage is determined.Then,a probabilistic damage imaging algorithm displaying probabilities of the presence of damage within the monitoring area is adopted to fuse information collected from multiple actuator-sensor paths to identify the location of damage.Damage indices under damaged state are used to generate the diagnostic image.Experimental study on a stiffened composite panel with random temperature changes is performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.