A review of fatigue life assessment procedures for aeroengine fracture critical components.

The assessment procedures used to life fracture critical' aeroengine components illustrate the practical implementation of our understanding of fatigue processes. The paper explores this with regard to fatigue concepts embedded in current life assessment procedures. As our understanding of Finite Element (FE) stress analysis has improved, so our understanding of materials response to cyclic loading has advanced and together these have provided improved modelling of component response to the imposed service loads. This in turn has led to the development and application of more realistic fatigue models and thus to more accurate predictions of the service lives.