Improving the operational readiness of America's military; HPC helps predict near-term operability on a probabilistic vehicle-by-vehicle basis.(High Performance Technical Computing)

Scientific Computing & Instrumentation, October, 2004 by Ingraffea, Anthony

Current approaches to supervision of the structural integrity of Department of Defense (DoD) flight vehicles have successfully avoided catastrophic structural failure due to cracking. However, this safety has been achieved at the expense of operational readiness and added costs. For instance, it is possible that, in a fleet of a particular type of aging aircraft, half of the fleet's usefulness is restricted because it has reached or surpassed 100 percent of the Fatigue Life Expended (FLE), a measure of the effective age of an aircraft main structure. The location of the controlling hot spot in this structure and the service life required for crack formation in it were determined by a full-scale fatigue test nearly 30 years ago.

Existing methodologies for...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.