A Brief History of Structural Fatigue Testing at Fishermans Bend Australia

This paper presents a brief history of fatigue research at the Fishermans Bend Australia Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) facility from the early days in the 1940s when Mr. H.A. Wills, Head of the then Structures Division, foresaw with remarkable insight the emerging danger of fatigue in aircraft structures. He presented a historic paper at the Second International Aeronautical Conference in 1949 and instituted a comprehensive programme of research on the fatigue of materials and structures which proved to be invaluable within the next decade as fatigue failures began to plague first civil and then military aircraft fleets worldwide. DSTO is still amongst the world leaders on the fatigue of aircraft structures, as many of these research programmes have won international recognition and as fatigue investigations expeditiously undertaken for the RAAF (and at times civil regulators) have supplied valuable information to the aircraft manufacturers, operators and researchers.

[1]  Herbert F Hardrath,et al.  An Investigation of the Effects of Atmospheric Corrosion on the Fatigue Life of Aluminum Alloys , 1958 .

[2]  M J Mcguigan,et al.  Fatigue Investigation of Full-scale Transport-airplane Wings : Summary of Constant-amplitude Tests Through 1953 , 1954 .

[3]  K. C. Watters,et al.  Probabilistic Life Analysis Of An F-111 Wing Based On Teardown Data , 2004 .

[4]  D Graham,et al.  ARL F/A-18 IFOSTP Full Scale Fatigue Test , 1993 .

[5]  J. L. Kepert.  Fishermens Bend - A Centre of Australian Aviation , 1993 .

[6]  Peter George Forrest,et al.  Fatigue of Metals , 2013 .

[7]  C A Patching,et al.  Fatigue Testing of Vampire Wings , 1979 .

[8]  N. Frost,et al.  The Growth of Fatigue Cracks , 2012 .

[9]  Richard E Whaley.  Fatigue Investigation of Full-Scale Transport-Airplane Wings: Variable-Amplitude Tests with a Gust-Loads Spectrum , 1957 .

[10]  R. R. Shaw.  The Level of Safety Achieved by Periodic Inspection for Fatigue Cracks , 1954 .

[11]  Simon Barter,et al.  Interpreting fatigue test results using a probabilistic fracture approach , 2005 .

[12]  W. Elber.  The Significance of Fatigue Crack Closure , 1971 .

[13]  L. Molent,et al.  The Canadian and Australian F/A-18 International Follow-On Structural Test Project , 2002 .

[14]  P. Paris.  A rational analytic theory of fatigue , 1961 .

[15]  Ao Payne,et al.  A Reliability Approach to the Fatigue of Structures , 1971 .

[16]  Lorrie Molent,et al.  An experimental evaluation of fatigue crack growth , 2005 .

[17]  C. A. Patching,et al.  COMPARISON OF AN ALUMINIUM ALLOY STRUCTURE WITH NOTCHED SPECIMENS UNDER PROGRAMME AND RANDOM FATIGUE LOADING SEQUENCES , 1969 .

[18]  A. O. Payne,et al.  The fatigue of aircraft structures , 1976 .

[19]  G. Totten.  FATIGUE CRACK PROPAGATION , 2008 .