Aircraft Ground Structural Testing

This chapter presents the static structural tests carried ou t during the design and certification of a new aircraft. To demonstrate the aircraft structural integrity over the operating environment, the testing program must answer to the essential airworthiness requirements within the design envelope specified by different sources such as Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR)/Joint Aviation Requirements (JAR), European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), Defence Standards (Def Stan), and so on, as well as specific, and sometimes more challenging, customer requirements. The process develops using a building block approach: from coupons and elements to details, subcomponent and component levels, the number of performed tests decreasing with the increase in complexity of the tested structure, and load type and path. At the end of this complex cycle, the full structure testing demonstrates the aircraft behavior and allows validation of the analytical models and the certification. Keywords: fatigue and damage tolerance; limit load; maneuvers diagram; static structural tests; ultimate load