Evaluating Material Safety and Design in Aerospace Engineering

This report examines the critical role of material selection in ensuring the safety and structural integrity of aircraft, with a specific focus on the Airbus A380. It discusses the utilization of aluminum alloys and carbon fiber reinforced plastic composites, highlighting their respective benefits in terms of damage tolerance, weight reduction, and structural strength. The report also delves into the issue of structural fatigue, referencing a specific incident involving fuel line pipe failures and emphasizing the importance of visual inspections and non-destructive evaluation techniques. Furthermore, it explores adhesively bonded repairs using carbon fiber reinforced plastics, stressing the need to maintain structural integrity during the repair process. Finally, the report outlines key policies and procedures implemented to enhance aircraft safety, including collaboration between Airbus and EASA, the introduction of the "Iron Bird" testing process, and stringent material testing regulations. The study concludes that proper material selection, design procedures, and repair techniques are crucial for ensuring the safety and airworthiness of aircraft.

Aerospace Engineering

Introduction
• One of the key consideration in aircraft design is
the safety issues.
• The materials used play a key role in enhancing the
safety of the body design.
• The Airbus A380 body was able ti utilize most of
the materials such as Aluminum alloys and carbon
fibre reinforced plastic composite (Mendell, 2013).
• Airbus A380 utilized about 61% aluminum alloys
and 21% composite materials.

Design criteria
• Aluminum alloys are able to offer the damage
tolerance when they are used for design of different
parts.
• These alloys are one of the best structural design
material choices for the airbus A380 (Langewiesche,
Drummond, & Hoopla digital, 2009).
• They provide the required structural integrity to
resist external loads and bear internal loads of the
auircraft.

Design criteria
• Aluminum alloys offer the important aspect of
weight reduction
• They also maintain the structural strength
which is needed to avoid key accidents.
• In the examination of the fatigue, high
frequency eddy current equipment are
employed to aid the detection of the non
visual cracks on the aircraft.

Design criteria
• also. Another material used for aircraft design
is the is the carbon fibre reinforced composite.
• Airbus A380 was able to employ the use of
carbon fibre reinforced plastic composite
(Alexander, 2009).
• Weight reduction in some key parts which did
not bear the weight of the airplane was
enhanced by the use of the carbon fibre
reinforced plastic composite.

Design criteria
• Design technologies are important in imp-0roving
materials characteristics.
• These technologies were able to offer the required
technological and structural advancement of the
carbon fibre reinforced plastic composite.
• Additionally, the choice of the carbon fibre
reinforced plastic composite was an important
development which did not interfere with the
structural strength design of the Airbus A380
(Avrenli, & Dempsey, 2014)

Structural fatigue
• Structural integrity helps prevention of key corrosion
cases which will enhance the abrasion when faced with
external loads.
• The cyclic stresses are usually below the nominal yield
strength of the materials which have been used.
• The fatigue process is able to go through three key
important stages.
1. initiation of the fatigue
2. propagation of the fatigue crack
3. sudden failure of the crack

Structural fatigue
• On December 2011, when Airbus A380 was
being repaired after an engine explosion in
Singapore, failures were noticed which resulted
from fatigue in fuel line pipe.
• Visual inspection was ordered first to analyze
the cracks development and causes (Igor, 2015).
• non-destructive evaluation techniques were
used to identify surface cracks

Structural fatigue
• Quantitative analysis of the cracks due to the
fatigue was carried out.
• The other types of the cracks which were
examined for the fatigue included the cracks at
the edge of the vertical web of the feet.
• EASA officials noted that thorough structural
audit and analysis of the cracks was needed to
ensure that the structural failure of the parts
does not occur.

Structural fatigue
• Audit of the materials was required in order to
ensure that they are able to meet the required
structural strength.
• This helped the aircraft to overcome the
external loads such as the bird attacks.
• Also, EASA also offered recommendation on the
analysis of the weight distribution to ensure
that the fatigue development issue is resolved.

Adhesively and bonded repair
• The composites are able to involve combination
of different materials which ensure that the
properties are enhances.
• For the Airbus A380, use of the composite
materials was able to enhance the performance
of the aircraft.
• Use of Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs)
has been implementing including the repairs of
the parts which fail due to load fatigue.

Adhesively and bonded repair
• Structural integrity of the repaired part is
important to enhance the performance of the
aircraft.
• The important characteristic of the carbon
fiber reinforced plastics is the ability to
combine well with different composite
materials.