The inherent need for holistic structural integrity application and progress

icaf2023 Tracking Number 38

The holistic structural integrity process (HOLSIP) has been gaining attention within structural integrity communities worldwide in recent years. HOLSIP involves accounting for elements beyond the safe-life and damage tolerance design paradigms, including physics-based and probabilistic model creation and use of advanced nondestructive inspection techniques. Material microstructure, crack growth phases, Initial Discontinuity States (IDS), residual stresses, and environmental considerations are incorporated within this paradigm. Maintenance and unintentional damage also are a factor within the holistic framework. The end goal of HOLSIP is to maintain structural integrity by accounting for these factors and predict potential failures, including environmental impacts and time-based degradation, throughout the useful life of a system and is applicable to many industries, not just aerospace applications. HOLSIP’s practices are becoming accepted as problem solving methodologies to many of the aging issues affecting United States Air Force legacy aircraft fleets. The proposed presentation will detail some of the holistic approach advances used in ASIP and other structural integrity organizations and focus on the progress which has been made in these efforts over the past 50+ years. Examples from the authors’ experiences in F-16 sustainment will be used to explain how time-based degradation and failure modes must be accounted for throughout the life of the aircraft.