Sustainment Engineering and Residual Life Prediction of Aluminum Alloy Structure at Service Environment

The effects of service environment will cause corrosion damage and fatigue cracks to initiate and grow, compromising structural integrity of the aircraft aluminum alloy structure. To develop an effective inspection and maintenance-scheduling program that takes advantage of life extension technologies, the sustainment engineering and residual life prediction method of aging aircraft aluminum alloy structure at service environment was proposed in this article. The whole algorithm of the sustainment engineering was described and the included situations of repairs, corrosion damage and widespread fatigue damage on aircraft structures were presented. At last, combining the results of FEM calculation with the AFGROW software of crack growth analyses, the residual life of corroded aluminum alloy structure was estimated.