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Muhammad Kamal Aero-10 110101021
The DeHavilland Comet Crash
Case Study
The DeHavilland Comet was the first production commercial jet airliner that
went into service in 1952. The earliest production aircraft designated G-ALYP
was loaned to the British Overseas Airways Company and inaugurated the first
scheduled overseas flight from London to Johannesburg with fare-paying
customers on-board. Much of the design is similar to the commercial airliners
seen around the world today. The Comet had four turbojet engines (turbofan
are now the norm for reduced noise and better fuel economy), which made the
aircraft much more efficient at higher altitudes of flight than its propeller-
driven contemporaries. Furthermore, it featured an internally pressurised
fuselage/cabin and also pioneered design elements which were unusual at the
time such as backward-swept wings, integral wing fuel tanks and a four-wheel
bogie undercarriage (1). Unfortunately, the DeHavilland Comet also influenced
modern aircraft design by two catastrophic failures.
Within two years of entering service two of the Comet fleet fell apart during
ascent to cruise altitude with a total loss of the aircrafts and the death of 56
passengers. The first production aircraft G-ALYP, scheduled on BOAC Flight
781 from Rome Ciampino to London Heathrow, was lost on January 10, 1954 by
the fuselage breaking up in mid-air 20 minutes after taking off. BOAC
voluntarily grounded its fleet and engineers suggested 60 immediate
modifications to the design to rectify some of the design flaws that were
believed to have caused the accident (2). Comet flights resumed on March 23,
1954 but only two weeks later on April 8, 1954 Comet G-ALYY, on the
chartered South African Airways Flight 201 from Rome Ciampino to Cairo,
again crashed into the Mediterranean sea within 30 minutes of take-off. The
entire Comet 1 fleet was then grounded, its Certificate of Airworthiness
revoked and the line production at DeHavilland in Hatfield suspended.
A number of investigations followed led by Sir Arnold Hall at the Royal
Aeronautical Establishment in Farnborough, UK. Most critically this included a
full-scale cyclic internal pressurisation test of the fuselage in a water tank of
the aircraft G-ALYU removed from service for this purpose. G-ALYU had
accumulated 1221 internal pressurisation cycles in service and after a further
1836 cycles in the water tank the cabin ripped open after a proof-test loading
33% higher than the nominal pressurisation cycle loading (2). Evidence of
fatigue cracking was found that originated from the aft lower corner of the
forward escape hatch and also from the right-hand aft corner of the windows
illustrated in Figures 1 and 2 below.
Fig. 1. Failure origin in Comet G-ALYU around escape hatch (1, 2).
Fig. 2. Failure origin of Comet G-ALYU around square windows (1, 2).
Both of these locations feature sharp right hand corners which cause local
areas of high stress-concentration that provide very benign conditions for crack
initiation and propagation under fatigue loading. Furthermore, circular
cylindrical structures, such as the aircraft fuselage, develop internal membrane
stresses (constant through the thickness) to resist the internal pressure loads.
As a result of the curved shape of the fuselage these forces induce secondary
out-of-plane bending moments acting to “straighten-out” the curvature. In
addition, the stress concentration around the the escape hatch and window
cutouts was exacerbated by countersunk bolt holes creating a “knife-edge” in
both the primary skin and doubler reinforcement (Figure 3) (2). Swift (1987)
has argued that the shell structure would have had enough residual strength to
sustain large and easily detectable cracks if they had grown midway between
two window cutouts. However, cracks that grew across a bay from one cutout
to the next would not be tolerable and result in ultimate failure of the
structure.
Fig. 3. Failure origin of Comet G-ALYU around countersunk bolt holes (1, 2).
Lessons Learned
The most notable lesson learned from the Comet disaster is that viewing
windows are no longer designed square but with rounded edges to reduce any
stress concentrations. Another immediate lessons is that crack-stoppers are
now placed between frame-cutouts that take the shape of circumferential
stiffeners that break-up the fuselage into multiple sections and thus prevent the
crack from propagating from one window to the next. Most importantly
however, before and during the Comet era the aircraft design philosophy was
predominantly SAFE-LIFE, which means that the structure was designed to
sustain the required fatigue life with no initial damage and no accumulation of
damage during service e.g. cracking (1). The Comet accidents showed that
around stress concentration cracks would initiate and propagate much earlier
than expected, such that safety could not be universally guaranteed in the
SAFE-LIFE approach without uneconomically short aircraft service lives.
For this reason the FAIL-SAFE design philosophy was developed in the late
1950’s. All materials are assumed to contain a finite initial defect size before
entering service that may grow due to fatigue loading in-service. The aircraft
structure is thus designed to sustain structural damage without compromising
safety up to a critical damage size that can be easily detected by visual
inspection between flights. All inspections are coupled with crack propagation
calculations that guarantee that an observed crack is not susceptible to grow to
the critical size between two inspection cycles, in which case adequate repair is
performed. Furthermore, the structure is designed to be damage tolerant with
multiple load paths and built-in redundancies that impart residual strength to
the aircraft in case the primary structure is compromised in-service.
References
(1) R.J.H Wanhill (2002). Milestone Case Histories in Aircraft Structural
Design. National Aerospace Laboratory. NLR-TP-2002-521
(2) T. Swift (1987). Damage tolerance in pressurised fuselages. 11th Plantema
Memorial Lecture. New Materials and Fatigue Resistant Aircraft Design (ed. D
L Simpson) pp 1 – 7. Engineering Materials Advisory Services Ltd., Warley, UK.