Fighter Wing Fatigue Testing

Fatigue Evaluation for a unique design

Fatigue evaluation for combat life survival of a fighter wing duplicating 40-year old methodologies with modern capabilities.

Experienced based capabilities in an independent laboratory

 Wing structures are typically evaluated by simulating the forces encountered by air pressure during flight maneuvers. This is accomplished with a whiffle tree structure fixed to the wing surface and applying the full loads through multiple critically spaced contact locations on the wing surface. The forces are applied through hydraulic actuators to the cross beams. Each actuator’s force is different and therefore each beam and its constituent contact points apply different force amplitudes. This test was conducted in the fully reversed bending condition in fatigue, thus requiring that the whiffle tree contact points not penetrate the wing surface. The life spectra are a historical flight envelope applied for several lifetimes for a duration of 25 days. Metcut designed and manufactured the fixed reaction and whiffle tree structure for this test utilizing our FEA and manufacturing capabilities. 

Authored By: William Grieszmer, Chief Engineer. For more information on this subject or other testing solutions, contact Bill at wgrieszmer@Metcut.com