Important announcement

Dear visitor,

Please note that this OpenCourseWare platform will be replaced at the end of 2026 by a new platform (under the same url ocw.tudelft.nl).

Courses and their contents that are currently available the platform will partly be migrated. URL’s for this content will change and content might be unavailable for some time. In addition, some courses will not be available anymore.

If you are linking to specific courses on this platform (for instance for your students), please take timely measures to avoid problems with access. Possible actions are:

  • Download the materials to your local platform (laptop, server)
  • For educators only (including TU Delft lecturers): Contact us at ocw@tudelft.nl and inform us what course you are using in what context (institute, program, period of use, number of students). We will research (in collaboration with the authors of the course) and decide if we will migrate the course, and if yes, can supply you with a new url.

Thank you.

6.0.1 Introduction to Design, Certification, Fatigue, and Durability

Course subject(s) Module 6. Certification, Fatigue, and Durability

In this module, we will pay attention to the most important thing in aviation and space: safety. We will highlight why having an open safety culture is important and how the different parties involved in safety in aerospace work together.

Furthermore, we will go into detail on the different safety design philosophies that exist in aerospace and what each entail.

This is then followed by discussing stress and strain concentration and why it is important to avoid them and the failure mechanism of fatigue will be discussed.

Finally, to leave you with a feeling that you are in safe hands, the principle of damage tolerance is discussed.

At the end of this module, you will be able to:

  • Explain the roles of the three responsible parties in aviation safety
  • Describe the three major design philosophies
  • Explain the meaning of stress and strain concentrations
  • Give the definition of fatigue
  • Discuss damage tolerance in terms of residual strength
Creative Commons License
Introduction to Aerospace Structures and Materials by TU Delft OpenCourseWare is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://online-learning.tudelft.nl/courses/introduction-to-aerospace-structures-and-materials/.
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