Author(s):
1. Slobodanka Boljanović, High School of Mechanical Engineering, Belgrade, Serbia
2. Strain Posavljak, Mašinski fakultet Univerziteta u Banjoj Luci, Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina
3. Stevan Maksimović, Vojnotehnički Institut Beograd, Serbia

Abstract:
Fatigue life analysis play a major role for safety design of load carrying structures, such as aircrafts, wheeled and rail vehicles, ships etc. In view of complexity of fatigue as process, fatigue life analysis has to be considered as crack initiation, crack propagation and failure. The objective of this paper is to develop complete procedure for fatigue life estimation of structural components for crack growth phase. For fatigue life calculation authors are used adequate criteria based on the theory of fracture mechanics. As a primary parameter, the stress intensity factor is defined for crack growth analysis. The functional relationship between the stress intensity factor and crack length, which is needed for fatigue life estimation for crack propagation from the initial to the critical length is obtained using analytical and/or numerical approaches. A special attention in this work is focused on aircraft wing skin as a damaged structural component. The formulated model/procedure is validated with experimental data. All comparisons show that calculated results agree well with available crack growth data.

Key words:
Fatigue,Crack growth,Life estimation,Numerical modelling,Wing skin.

Date of abstract submission:
15.01.2013.

Conference:
DEMI 2013

Applied paper from author