Fatigue, residual strength and non-destructive tests of an aging aircraft’s wing detail

This study concentrates on fatigue, residual strength and non-destructive tests of an aging aircraft’s wing detail of the Finnish Air Force’s Hawk Mk.51 jet trainer. The studied detail was the integral stiffener with a drain hole near the wing root. Fatigue tests were deemed necessary to verify experimentally the analytically observed short fatigue life, significant crack growth rates and eventually to re-assess the detail’s inspection period for the fleet jets. The results of the study have been utilized e.g. at the complementary type approval accomplished for the Finnish Air Force’s Hawk.