Undercarriage fatigue test control by acoustic emission method

Abstract

Acoustic emission (AE) monitoring during fatigue and residual strength tests of aircraft undercarriage is discussed. In several variants of loading the processes of crack development are analyzed. It is shown that AE control gives possibility to discover fatigue crack initiation, to fix different stages of crack propagation (including stop of crack growth and renew its development), to analyze velocity of crack growth, to discover initiation of several cracks, to localize crack position, to discover cracks in internal parts of test object (which cannot discover by ordinary methods of non-destructive inspection), to decrease expenses of experimental tests, to decrease test object disassembly and assembly (comparing with use of ordinary methods of test control), to prevent stand failures, etc.