Book Description
In order to obtain an appraisal of the state of the art of fail-safe design, the author made an investory of fail-safe design methods applied by various aerospace companies and of research work relevant to the engineering approach of fatigue-crack propagation and residual strength. This memorandum is based on information from discussions with personnel of several companies and research laboratories, with the main emphasis on plane stress and transitional fracture behavior. The memorandum presents a brief description of the general approach to the fail-safe problem, an analysis of several of the existing methods that use this approach, including their shortcomings, and a summary of the data required for a good fail-safe design. A specific approach proposed for the presentation in MIL-HDBK-5 of data pertinent to the fail-safe design concept is evaluated in terms of its applicability to that concept. (Author).