TABLE OF CONTENTS Structural design should be, and often is, a creative process for which empiricism has limited value. Innovation is the "life-blood" of better designs, but comes with considerable challenge to structural safety, because "the validating service experience" is not available.
One way to compensate for the lack of service experience is to introduce explicit safety constraints into the structural design process. To design so that a specified level of safety is reached and then maintained in service by a complementing risk management process. The risk management can be established as a control process that uses flexible inspection programs that, based on feedback from service, can be changed to method and frequency to keep probability of an unsafe flight within required levels.
Pertinent service experience provides a validation of design methods, design criteria, detail designs, structural integrity rules, definitions of loads, environmental requirements, manufacturing processes and criticality decisions. Consequently, the lack of service experience must be overcome. A prudent introduction, into the design process, of explicit safety constraints, "high-fidelity-analysis" methods and design data testing that is calibrated to these constraints could "go a long way" toward compensating for lack of service experience.
Emerging service experience and "new" data are important factors in maintaining safety levels, but also in the learning process that produces an improved future. A rational process monitors, collects, analyzes and produces feedback into risk management and design processes.
Another important aspect of service experience is the validation of "Fail-Safe design" principles. FAR and JAR both require...
