Failure Report
Failure Report
Failure Report
1. Introduction
This memo contains a failure report on the De Havilland
explanation and analysis of why the failure occurred and finally the
2. Description
The De Havilland Comet 1 took its first commercial flight on
May 2, 1952, becoming the first ever jet engine propelled commercial
aircraft and promising a bright future for the british aircraft industry.
(Waterton & Hewat, 1955) (Withey, 1997) The aircraft was propelled by
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four Ghost Turbojet engines each producing 5000 pounds of thrust,
locations on the wings and around cut outs such as windows where
gauge skin was 8.25 psi, twice that of any previous situation. (Withey,
1997) May 2, 1953, exactly one year after the comets inaugural flight
the comet G-ALYV (Yoke Victor) encounters a tropical storm and breaks
up mid-air over india. Next on January 8th, 1954, the comet G-ALYP
lost and the aircraft could be seen to break up and crash into the sea
near Elba, this time in good weather conditions. (See Figure One) This
resulted in the comets being grounded but after only a few small
modifications the fleet was back in service and on April 8th 1954
of its climb. Once again in good weather the aircraft plummeted into
the sea near Naples. (Withey, 1997) (Waterton & Hewat, 1955) After
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airworthiness. Extensive investigations began, including the recovery
the reasons behind these failures (See Figure one) (Waterton & Hewat,
one level the failures occurred due metal fatigue in high stress areas
Technology) The particular alloy of aluminum, DTD 546B, used for the
aircrafts skin has a high rate of crack growth and in areas around cut
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out where stress’s were concentrated, to an excess of 315 MPa, cracks
(Withey, 1997) On another level, the reason behind the use of riveting
around the square cut outs, despite the initial suggestions of the chief
designer, was that the tooling required to utilize redux in these areas
would be too difficult and expensive to produce. This would not have
been a problem had ovular cut outs been used as seen on revised
Technology)
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Figure 3: Main site of failure on Comet Yoke Peter (UofP Faculty of
Technology)
4. Lessons to be Learned
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testing reviled that small crack produced during manufacturing could
quickly propagate around high stress areas many lives could have
been saved. Finally nothing should take precedence over safety and no
3. References
http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/sme/interactive_resources/tutorials/Failure
Cases/index.html
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-468/ch13-1.htm
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on October 23, 2009 from ScienceDirect Database via Compendex
Database
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