Fatigue Analysis & Damage Tolerance
How our Fatigue and Damage Tolerance (F&DT) assessments can help you
- Predict and avoid potentially costly and dangerous mechanical failures in advance
- Predict the fatigue life of your product in terms of time or number of operations
- Increase the durability and longevity of components through design optimisation
- Simplify complex fatigue & fracture problems into easy-to-understand results
- Carry out crack growth analyses to predict growth rates, critical crack sizes and remaining crack growth life
- Identify potential failure points and implement corrective actions
- Monitor fatigue damage consumption (Fatigue Index) of your products to predict remaining life in advance
- Quickly & cheaply investigate suitability of designs for long-term performance
- Increase confidence in achieving fatigue design lives early in the design process
- Assess failed components to determine likely causes and develop ways to improve future performance
We are one of the UK’s leading providers of Fatigue Analysis & Damage Tolerance Analysis services
Jesmond Engineering has extensive experience in Fatigue and Damage Tolerance Analysis. Our staff have been involved in this field since 1987. We are trusted by our clients across aerospace, defence and other high-technology industries to provide Fatigue and Damage Tolerance assessments of complex components and assemblies. Our capabilities include:
- Fatigue Analysis
- Time domain and frequency domain
- Strain- and stress-based
- Fracture Mechanics
- Fatigue Monitoring / HUMS / IAT / Fleet Tracking
- Full-Scale Fatigue Test Spectrum Generation
- Supply and development of fatigue analysis and HUMS / IAT / Fleet Tracking software
- Supply of Concept Analyst software for assessment of stress concentrations at complex and interacting 2D features
Our specialist engineers are experienced across a range of safety-critical industries and can be flexible to your needs.
We’d love to help with your project
If you are planning a project with Fatigue and Damage Tolerance risks or have experienced a component failure that might benefit from specialist support, then we would love to help. Click below to book a call to discuss your requirements.
What is Fatigue and Damage Tolerance?
Fatigue & Damage Tolerance assessments utilise a range of techniques to predict the life of a product, monitor the in-service loads or conditions and understand a tolerable level of damage (fatigue cracking) for parts to still perform as intended. At Jesmond Engineering we utilise classical methods, combined with software, to generate easy to understand results.
Fatigue Analysis techniques
Fatigue Analysis
Fatigue Analysis allows for the prediction of the lifespan and durability of components subjected to cyclic loading. It determines if a structure will fail due to initiation (nucleation) and growth of cracks. This differs to static strength analysis, where a component’s suitability is based on its strength compared with the peak applied loading. The fatigue life of a component combines many factors, such as the number and severity of loading cycles the part is subjected to, the geometry, in-service environment and the fatigue characteristics of the material used.
Materials subjected to cyclic loading can fail at stress levels below their static strength. Jesmond Engineering can assess the cumulative damage of a component and predict when failures are likely to occur.
We can perform fatigue analyses using either stress-based (s-N) or strain-based (e-N) techniques. We perform fatigue analyses for our clients using the software they require – client-supplied, in-house or commercial.
Our in-house J-Neub software predicts life to crack initiation using Neuber’s rule (a strain-based technique). Some of our customers have purchased our J-Neub software for analysis and design of their aircraft structure.
Fracture Mechanics
Fracture Mechanics allows structural failures due to the propagation of cracks or defects to be predicted. We can calculate critical crack lengths for variable applied loads to minimise the risk of structural failures. We have extensive knowledge of the analysis of short crack thresholds using techniques based on Smith, El-Haddad and Murakami theories.
At Jesmond Engineering, we are also capable of predicting how a crack or defect will grow over time. We provide analyses using either client-supplied software or commercially available software such as AFGROW or NASGRO.
Fatigue Monitoring / HUMS / IAT / Fleet Tracking
Fatigue Monitoring, Health & Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) and Individual Aircraft Tracking (IAT) (also known as Fleet Tracking) provide a method of monitoring the usage of a product (primarily fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft) to predict its fatigue life consumption and provide data to support maintenance, fleet management, product retirement and life extension programmes.
Jesmond Engineering currently provides HUMS fleet tracking and IAT to several major aerospace customers.
We have written software for several fleet tracking programs, including our in-house solution, J-Track.
Full-Scale Fatigue Test Spectrum Generation
A Fatigue Spectrum is typically a time-based sequence of loads applied to a component, assembly or an entire product such as an aircraft or helicopter. Generating a spectrum typically requires an assessment and understanding of the in-service operations a product is subjected to. For an aircraft or helicopter this can typically start with an assessment of manoeuvre time-histories combined with air vehicle configurations and their operating environments. Sometimes this information has been previously defined as part of the air vehicle’s design criteria.
Jesmond Engineering has experience in generating full-scale fatigue test spectra for several major aircraft and helicopter programmes.
Related Case Studies
Fatigue Analysis FAQs
You probably have questions about the Fatigue Analysis services we provide. Some of the most frequently asked are answered below. If you still have questions, then please get in touch and we’ll happily provide an answer if we can!
Yes, whatever industry you’re in. We specialise in Aerospace and Defence, but are experienced at performing fatigue assessments on a wide range of products and improving their design to predict, minimise or even eliminate failures in the future.
Get in touch, we can discuss your failure and, if required, inspect parts to understand the failure. We can then perform fatigue analysis on your product to understand the expected life and propose design changes to increase this, should you wish.
We have in-house software to assist with many parts of Fatigue and Damage Tolerance Analysis, such as J-Neub, J-Track & J-Rain. We are however comfortable using client-supplied or commercial software, such as AFGROW or NASGRO for Fracture Mechanics.
It really does depend on the complexity and scope of your project. We’d be happy to discuss this with you in more detail and provide a firm estimate of the cost once we have a clear understanding of your project requirements.
Our team of engineers have a breadth of experience performing Fatigue and Damage Tolerance analysis on complex assemblies across a range of industries. We are comfortable working with complex designs and wide-ranging materials.
Yes, we can. In addition to being fully accredited to ISO9001 standard we also hold AS9100 certification for the aviation, space and defence industries.
Not at all. Although we are located in East Yorkshire in the North of England, we have clients in the UK, throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
Simple—get in touch with us to book a call with one of our specialist engineers. Once we have discussed your project and gained a full understanding of its requirements we’ll produce a formal proposal. This will include an estimate of the timescales and costs, and our terms of business. If you are happy to proceed, we can commence work on receipt of your order.
Let us help
If you are planning a project or struggling with a complex engineering scenario that might benefit from the application of Fatigue Analysis or Fatigue Monitoring then we would like to help. Click below to book a call to discuss your requirements.