Posted on 09/09/2019 6:18:47 AM PDT by Red Badger
A door blew off a Boeing 777X as the new plane was undergoing what was supposed to be its final structural inspection by federal regulators.
The test is meant to push the plane beyond its limits. Engineers had the plane pressurized and on the ground. They loaded it up well beyond capacity and bent its wings in an extreme manner, in a way almost certain to never happen in the real world.
As the ground test was underway and as engineers and FAA inspectors watched, a door blew off the plane.
Sources tell KOMO there was a stunned silence after it happened.
Former Boeing Engineer Dr. Todd Curtis runs Airsafe.com and said this doesn't happen often. "I've never heard of a case where a door popped off like this during a stress test before," he said. "Doesn't mean it hasn't happened before, I'm just not aware of it."
He said Boeing will want to know if this was an problem with this specific plane, or if there are other issues they need to address.
Boeing said it runs these extreme tests in order to make sure the planes are as safe as they can possibly be.
In a written statement to KOMO Newsradio, a Boeing spokesman said "...during ultimate load testing on the 777X static test airplane, an event occurred that forced the test team to halt testing. Safety is the highest priority at Boeing. The test team followed all safety protocols and there were no reported injuries. The team is currently working to understand what happened and ensure the area is safe for work to continue. The ultimate load test is the latest in a series of tests that Boeing has been conducting on this full-scale test airplane over the past several months."
Dr. Curtis said this is not the time to race to conclusions, and it could be something totally innocuous that caused the door to come off. But it could cause delays. "It's unlikely this will speed up certification," he said. "It's more likely it will make the certification team, whoever's involved with Boeing and the FAA, do extra work to figure out what happened.
Investors were disappointed recently when Boeing announced delays in delivering its first 777X model into next year.
I usually feel better when we see a failure.
A failure means either a design fault or an error in the testing procedure.
A pass could be masking a real problem.
The Intel Floating Point bug was do to an internal pass masking a real problem.
“It’s unlikely this will speed up certification,”
Ya’think?
Testing it until it breaks is one method. The question becomes did the plane meet the design specifications?
Sounds like it failed
If it is ultimate then that is likely beyond requirements and is more about what is the factor of safety.
Might need a little more?
Uh Oh Better get Maaco!
30 sec.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=047BfmFdMrM
This is why they do tests.
“I usually feel better when we see a failure.”
Agreed. means they found a weakness and now engineering can correct it. Had a house built in 2001 and the roof failed inspection. i was actually good withthat. In my mind it meant the city inspector was actually looking and didn’t just do a drive by sign off.....never had a roof problem either.
If only Boeing had been this rigorous with their software testing for the 737MAX.
I used to run destructive failure tests on various metal fabrications. The whole idea was to take it to failure and learn what lead to the failure.
Well, better now than in actual flight. That’s why they build static test frames in the first place, especially after that bad experience with the de Havilland DH. 106 Comet with the metal fatigue problems caused by flying at over 35,000 feet altitude repeatedly.
The test...................
“The whole idea was to take it to failure and learn what lead to the failure.”
Shake it till it rattles. Fix the rattle. Shake it again.
L
I wonder if this will be corrected with software. /s
As long as I can witness the failure from a distance.
Sometimes you run tests to failure to see how far it can go before it does fail. Other times you run tests to extreme design limits to see if they designed it right and it should survive the test. Maybe not be usable afterwards but it doesn’t fail in a way that kills people.
This test looks to be one of the latter. It should have been able to handle these stresses without busting open. I’m sure they modeled it on computers and it did survive. But in the real world it did not. The issue is then that it calls into question all of the structural design modeling. Bad news for Boeing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Highway_in_the_Sky
1951 movie was based on the 1948 book “No Highway”
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