Assessing and maintaining continued airworthiness in the presence of wide spread fatigue damage: An Australian perspective

This paper addresses the challenge of maintaining the continued airworthiness of aging aircraft and illustrates these challenges by reference to various Australian experiences in the field of widespread fatigue damage (WSFD). The paper then proceeds to discuss policy and procedures for the use of composite repairs to principal structural elements (PSE) and structurally significant items (SSI). A modified form of the current FAA two stage evaluation and approval process is proposed. In this process the first stage is based on static structural strength considerations, to keep the aircraft down time to a minimum, and the second stage requires a full damage tolerance evaluation to be performed. The role of matrix dominated failures is also discussed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.