Corrosion in Aircraft Fuselage Lap Joints

The Wright Brothers’ Flyer helped create one of the most used transportation systems on Earth. Thousands of people every day use the airplane to travel to other countries, for business reasons and for holidays. The Flyer was evolved over time into a better airplane. The airplanes today are much safer compared to the plane the Wright Brothers invented. Right now, the chance of dying in a crash is less than one in a million, but in the early days, plane crashes occurred more often. Every day, there are approximately 100,000 flights, and the large planes weigh 575 tonnes, the same as 300 cars. Planes can also now carry more people and can keep in flight for longer. Because of the Wright Brothers, people are now able to travel quickly to anywhere they want to

Just moments after being given instructions to climb to a higher altitude “the captain stated, ‘Look at that crazy fuel flow indicator their on number four, see that?’” (TWA flight crash). Afterwards, in an investigation lead by the Nation Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) they concluded that the cause of the crash was due to the combustion of the mixture of air and fuel in the “center wing fuel tank” (TWA flight crash). It is no wonder why many people believe the cause of the crash was a fuel tank explosion. Later, the NTSB claimed that two worn down wires must have sparked in the fuel tank, exploding the whole plane (Cole 36). The NTSB also that the flammability in the central wing fuel tank, due to the hazardous mixture of air and fuel, was too high (TWA Flight 800). Based on the various tests and investigations of the crash, mechanical failure has remained one of the most accepted theories of the flight’s

One contributing factor was metal fatigue, this occurs when “metal parts that undergo many repeated strains eventually fail at a loading far below their original ultimate strength”, Garrison (2005) (p. 1). Manufacturers at the time primarily used aluminum and steel, because of their overall strength and how readily they were available. What engineers did not consider was the abuse the airframes would take over time. This factor went overlooked, resulting in numerous crashes with fatalities.

Ultrasonic sensors emit short, high-frequency sound pulses at regular intervals. These propagate in the air at the velocity of sound. If they strike an object, then they are reflected back as echo signals to the sensor, which itself computes the distance to the target based on the time-span between emitting the signal and receiving the echo.

Sonography utilizes sound waves to generate an image that can be analyzed to determine or rule out a diagnosis. Ultrasound or ultrasonography is a medical imaging technique that uses high frequency sound waves. It is a high pitch frequency that cannot be heard by the human ear. A diagnostic medical sonographer works directly with patients in a dimly lit room with imaging machines. The sonographer gets the medical history of the patient and prepares the patient for an ultrasound examination. The sonographer explains the noninvasive procedure and answers any question the patient might have. The sonographer positions the patient and covers the patient only exposing the area needed for the procedure. The sonographer

Crashes are rare, and most of the time are consequences of many unrelated factors. Many believe that airplane crashes are the cause of bad piloting or harsh weather; but other factors are overlooked. Suren Ratwatte have been studying airplane

Multiple factors were contributing to American Airlines fatal accident in 1999. To identify the factors and different issues with American Airlines Flight 1420 the SHELL model will be used. One of the major cause of this accident was a breakdown in Liveware-Software. Liveware-Software investigates procedures, manuals, checklists and standard operational procedures (ICAO SHELL Model, 2016).

Following the investigation of the American Airlines 1420 accident, the NTSB released a detailed and comprehensive list of the overall findings. Using data from the accident craft’s CVR and FDR, along with a thorough investigation of the crash site, the NTSB findings painted a clear understanding of the string events leading up to the crash. In addition, the events gave insight to the causes that prevented flight 1420 from landing safely in Little Rock.

On Saturday, August twenty-second, a stunt plane at an air show in England crashed and killed seven people. It was said that the pilot of the stunt plane was attempting to do a loop, but lost control and crashed onto a highway. The seven people that were killed in this accident were people just driving on highway and were caught in the accident. The plane model that crashed was called a “Hawker Hunter”, and it was a plane model from the Cold War. Along with the seven people that were killed in the accident, there are around fourteen people that were injured.

Exhaustive research revealed the technical cause of the disasters. The Columbia was doomed when during the launch a loose piece of foam struck the leading edge of the left wing ripping a hole in the carbon tiles previously thought to be indestructible.

One of the most deadly plane crashes was when two planes ran into each other on the ground, killing 583 people. One of the deadliest plane crashes in the air was Trans World Airlines (TWA) flight 800. In the report they say that mechanical failure is at fault. Other people say that it was a missile strike at fault. The mystery behind the crash of TWA flight 800 can be summed up in two groups, missile hit or mechanical failure.

On July 19, 1989 United flight 232, a DC-10 aircraft took off from Denver’s Stapleton International Airport on route to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. The DC-10 aircraft was manufactured by McDonnell Douglas. It has three General Electric CF6-6 engines, two that were wing mounted and one that was tail mounted. The number two engine, located on the tail, had a pre-existing defect introduced when it was manufactured. It was known as a hard alpha inclusion which causes cracks to form early in the lifetime of the fan disks. However, the cracks were too small to detect by the naked eye and overtime grew to a size large enough to bring the plane down on that fatal day.

Ultrasounds can work because they're made from sound waves. The sound waves produce an image. Sound waves go through your skin and focus on a certain part of your your body. There’s a scanning device that helps you focus on the body part, its called a “Transducer”. A transducer is a hand held small device that sends and receives signals from ultrasounds. A transducer changes impulses into sound waves.

There are several events that contributed to this incidents occurring. Some of them are related in the form of chain events for instance the second event occur because of the effect from the first event and the third event occur because of the effect from second event and so on until the incident occur. By using SHELL Model, base on the Aircraft Accident Report 3/96 which was provided and presented by Air Accidents Investigation Branch, Department of Transport, under the report title of “Report on the Incident to Boeing 737-400, G-OBMM near Davontry on 23 February 1995, the analysis of the contribution events to the incident can be reveal and the appropriate recommendations from competence authority was been made to ensure the same incident will not occur in the future.

Pieter Desnercks et.al 2015, studied that for specimen with a single crack the reduction was on average 44% and for double cracked specimens the reduction was 54%. The measured values for single and double cracked specimens are within the relatively wide range of values reported by other researchers in the past. The crack orientation with respect to the rib pattern of the reinforcing bars has little or no effect on the obtained bond properties. Three different