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The air transport markets affected by global economic climate and regional demand characteristics are evolving fairly dynamically. To cope with the evolving demand and to penetrate desired market segments, operators' usage of aircraft has been getting more and more dynamic with increased deviation from the originally designed mission objectives. The objective of this research is to investigate the effects of in-service rrusslon variation on aircraft structural performance so as to provide airlines with a more realistic approach toward better fleet management. During the research, the scenarios and phenomena causing fleet in-service mission variations were investigated. A survey on the utilisation of world-wide aircraft fleets was conducted and presented. The in-service missions of aircraft fleets were found to vary significantly in terms of mission profile. Furthermore, the utilisation patterns of individual aircraft in the same fleet of a major airline are also being thoroughly analysed. Tremendous variations of mission mixes are found among individual aircraft. In order to analyse the effects of the in-service mission variation, methodologies and models based on fatigue test results have been developed by the author. Actual service data are being input for the effect analysis. It is found that the mission variation has a considerable engineering influence on the aircraft's structural performance either in terms of mission airworthiness or fatigue life span. Finally, a conceptual model, the 'Integrated Airline Fleet Management Model' (IAFM), has been developed as a blueprint for practical application. By implementing the IAFM, airline will be able to obtain a realistic picture of the health of its aircraft. With a more reliable basis for maintenance planning, improved inspection accuracy, reduced maintenance cost and better structural airworthiness can be achieved.

Low pressure steam turbine last stage blade behaviour was investigated and researched over duration of this PhD project period. The aim of the research was to enhance the life of last stage blades by investigation and mitigation of the accumulative damage throughout the life of the turbine blade. The research was mainly broken down in to three main themes covering erosion, High Cycle Fatigue in industrial service and High Cycle Fatigue under laboratory conditions. The three themes were then further analysed during the research analysis for correlation and the extent of accumulative damage contribution during each stage. An accumulative damage model was constructed together with mathematical expressions for each stage of accumulative damage. The erosion damage model was constructed first and separately, followed by a separate damage model for crack initiation and propagation. After this a combined damage model was constructed to represent accumulative damage throughout the turbine blade lifecycle. After the damage mechanisms were researched and understood, a damage mitigation model was constructed consisting of primary damage mechanisms and secondary damage mechanisms. The primary damage mechanisms were then investigated further and a life extension technique developed to increase turbine blade life by reducing damage rates per turbine start, giving more starts life capability to the last stage blades. The secondary mitigation mechanisms was not covered in this project and regarded as future work under the low pressure turbine life extension possibilities. The research work also gave a spin off which allowed the author to conduct and finish a separate piece of work of designing the problem out through redesigning the turbine blade and condenser space in conjunction with leading experts from the industry.

Thermal fatigue failure, due to the fracture of solder bumps which was cased by the coefficient of thermal expansion mismatch deformation, is frequently encountered in flip-chip package. Therefore, this thesis attempts to study the effects of geometric parameters variation on lead-free flip-chip package under temperature cycling test. First, we used the finite element method to simulate the thermal loading response of lead-free flip-chip. The accumulated equivalent creep strain and accumulated creep strain energy density of the lead-free solder bumps were calculated, and were used to predict the thermal fatigue life of lead-free flip-chip package. The Taguchi method is applied to obtain the optimal design parameters in order to enhance reliability of the lead-free flip-chip under temperature cycling loading. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) is also used for estimating the influence of the factors quantitatively. The obtained results can be adopted as references for the lead-free flip-chip package design.

HVDC is usually used to link two AC power systems with same or different system frequencies. Nevertheless, even the two AC power systems linked have the same rated system frequency, the actual frequencies of the two AC systems may be different from time to time due to different load conditions. As a result, asynchronous operation occurs to the HVDC system, which leads to a lot of harmonics to be induced. The frequencies of the main harmonic are within several to several tens Hz (i.e. sub-harmonics), which coincide with the turbine resonant frequency range. Therefore, it has the potential of producing the sub-synchronous resonance phenomena. Usually, the sub-synchronous resonance arising from the excitation by the sub-harmonics currents persists only a very short period of time, thereby the induced fatigue loss would not so serious. However, due to the cumulating characteristics, the fatigue loss may reach the dangerous degree if the shafts and blades are persistently subjected to such resonance excitations. According to such a situation, the fatigue life expenditure of the turbine shafts and blades are evaluated in the thesis. It is anticipated that the potential danger of the turbine-generators in conjunction with the operations of HVDC system can be found.

The effects of different ferrule length and epoxy layer thickness of the module of optical fiber connector under thermal cycling are investigated in this thesis. The finite element method package, MSC. MARC, is used in this study and the coupled thermal-elastic-plastic model is employed in the analysis. The mechanical behavior and life prediction with different length of ferrule and thickness of epoxy layer are considered. It is shown that the thickness of epoxy layer has the major effect on the life of the module. The stress and strain in the fiber and epoxy layer are decreasing with increasing of ferrule length, and the life of the module is increasing with increasing of thickness of epoxy layer. Finally, we recommend the ferrule length can be designed between 7.89mm ~10.5mm.

Moisture damage in asphalt mixes can be defined as loss of strength and durability due to the presence of moisture at the binder-aggregate interface (adhesive failure) or within the binder (cohesive failure). This research focuses on the evaluation of the susceptibility of aggregates and asphalts to moisture damage through understanding the micro-mechanisms that influence the adhesive bond between aggregates and asphalt and the cohesive strength and durability of the binder. Moisture damage susceptibility is assessed using surface energy measurements and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). Surface energy is defined as the energy needed to create a new unit surface area of material in vacuum condition. Surface energy measurements are used to compute the adhesive bond strength between the aggregates and asphalt and cohesive bond strength in the binder. DMA testing is used to evaluate the rate of damage accumulation in asphalt binders and mastics. The DMA applies a cyclic, torsional strain controlled loading to cylindrical asphalt mastics until failure. The DMA results are analyzed using continuum damage mechanics that focuses on separating the energy expended in damaging the material from that associated with viscoelastic deformation. A new approach is developed to analyze the DMA results and calculate the rate of damage. The developed approach is used to evaluate six asphalt mixtures which have performed either well or poorly in the field. The resistance of the field mixes to moisture damage is shown to be related to the calculations of bind energies and the accumulated damage in the DMA.

Primary goal of this thesis is to present proposed method for fatigue life evaluation applicable to light composite aircraft. The first chapter of this thesis is focused on certification specifications and requirements for fatigue life proof of structure. Significant part of this thesis is dedicated to fatigue life evaluation and guideline how to proceed in evaluation of fatigue data. Thesis also points out on possible methods of statistical fatigue data analysis and critical parts of structure in means of fatigue life. The last part of thesis is focused on design of experimental evaluation of structure including test rig and load sequence. This chapter also provides inside into possible means of introducing artificial defects into the structure.

<div>High temperature alloys have been extensively used in many applications, such as furnace muffles, fuel nozzles, heat treating fixtures and fuel nozzles. Due to such conditions these materials should have resistance to cyclic loading, oxidation and high heat. Although there are numerous prior experimental and theoretical studies, there is insufficient understanding of application of the unified viscoplasticity theory to finite element software for fatigue life</div><div>prediction.</div><div><br></div><div>Therefore, the goal of this research is to develop a procedure to implement unified viscoplasticity</div><div>theory in finite element (FE) model to model the complex material deformation pertaining to thermomechanical load and implement an incremental damage lifetime rule to</div><div>predict thermomechanical fatigue life of high temperature alloys.</div><div><br></div><div>The objectives of the thesis are:</div><div>1. Develop a simplified integrated approach to model the fatigue creep deformation</div><div>under the framework of ‘unified viscoplasticity theory’</div><div><br></div><div>2. Implement a physics - based crack growth damage model into the framework</div><div><br></div><div>3. Predict the deformation using the unified viscoplastic material model for ferritic</div><div>cast iron (Fe-3.2C-4.0Si-0.6Mo) SiMo4.06</div><div><br></div><div>4. Predict the isothermal low cycle fatigue (LCF) and LCF Creep life using the damage model</div><div><br></div><div>In this work, a unified viscoplastic material model is applied in a FE model with a combination of Chaboche non-linear kinematic hardening, Perzyna rate model and static recovery</div><div>model to model rate dependent plasticity, stress relaxation, and creep-fatigue interaction.</div><div><br></div><div>Also, an incremental damage rule has been successfully implemented in a FE model. The calibrated viscoplastic model is able to correlate deformations pertaining to isothermal LCF, LCF-Creep and thermal-mechanical fatigue (TMF) experimental deformations. The life predictions</div><div>from the FE model have been fairly good at room temperature (20°C), 400°C and 550°C under Isothermal LCF (0.00001/s and 0.003/s) and LCF-Creep tests.</div><div><div><br></div><div>The material calibration techniques proposed for calibrating the model parameters resulted in a fairly good correlation of FE model derived hysteresis loops with experimental hysteresis, pertaining to Isothermal LCF (ranging from 0.00001/s to 0.003/s), Isothermal LCF-Creep tests (with hold time) and TMF responses. In summary, the method and models developed in this work are capable of simulating material deformation dependency on temperature, strain-rates, hold time, therefore, they are capable to modeling creep-stress relaxation and fatigue interaction in high-temperature alloy design.</div></div>