The International Journal of Structural Integrity and Emerald help bridging the gap between theory and operational practise

Citation

(2010), "The International Journal of Structural Integrity and Emerald help bridging the gap between theory and operational practise", International Journal of Structural Integrity, Vol. 1 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijsi.2010.43601aab.005

The International Journal of Structural Integrity and Emerald help bridging the gap between theory and operational practise

Article Type: News From: International Journal of Structural Integrity, Volume 1, Issue 1

On May 25-29, 2009 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, representatives from the International Journal of Structural Integrity (IJSI) joined forces with the organising committee for the 31st Conference of the International Committee on Aeronautical Fatigue (ICAF).

The ICAF was formed in 1951 in response to growing concerns regarding fatigue problems in metal aircraft structures. The stated aims of ICAF are to encourage contacts between people actively engaged in aircraft structural fatigue problems and to exchange information concerning aeronautical fatigue. To this end, a conference and a symposium are organised every two years for attendance by representatives of industry, universities and institutes, regulatory agencies, and operators throughout the world.

During the two-day conference, reviews of aeronautical fatigue activities by the national delegates of the 14 member nations of ICAF were presented. The event was followed by the three-day symposium which involved specialist papers presented by authors with design, manufacturing, airworthiness regulations, operations, and research backgrounds. The ICAF2009 Symposium was based on the theme “Bridging the gap between theory and operational practice”. The last morning of the symposium was dedicated to workshops with specialists providing in-depth lectures for the benefit of both novice and advanced workers in the field of aeronautical fatigue.

Prior to the event, the Editorial Advisory Board of the IJSI, several members of which also serve as national delegates, decided along with the International Committee to present the Best Paper Award from the pool of the submitted works. A two-step procedure was organised in order all the works to receive rigorous scientific review by two academic reviewers and be graded to a scale of ten. During the second step, the top ten papers were subjected to open voting. The Best Paper Award recipients were:

Dr Barter (see Figure 1) has a PhD in Engineering Science from Monash University, having achieved undergraduate qualifications in metallurgy, surface finishing, and corrosion control from RMIT. During his time at DSTO, he has been involved with the metallurgical investigation of aircraft structure and component failures, quantitative fractographic research of cracking in several RAAF aircraft and the management of full-scale fatigue tests. Additionally, he has been involved in the investigation of aircraft oxygen system fires and aircraft accident investigations. He now works in the structural integrity area as a structural integrity lead and undertakes investigations into the fatigue and fracture of high strength aluminium and titanium alloys.

Sarah E. Galyon Dorman (see Figure 2) is a Research Engineer at the US Air Force Academy’s Center for Aircraft Structural Life Extension. Her responsibilities include mechanical testing and analysis, investigation of non-abrasive coating removal techniques for aircraft structural teardown, and analysis of the applicability of the environmental severity index to real world aircraft damage. She is the Program Manager for the Three-dimensional Crack Growth Program. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Her Master’s in Materials Science and Engineering is from the University of Virginia.

Min Liao (see Figure 3) received his PhD in Aeronautical Engineering at the Northwestern Polytechnic University, China in 1993. From 1996 to 1999, he was working at Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM), Germany and National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL/JAXA), Japan. In 1999, He joined the Institute for Aerospace Research of National Research Council Canada (NRC), and now he is a Senior Research Officer, Team Leader of Structural Life Cycle Management. At NRC, He has been performing and managing numerous projects in support of Canadian Forces air fleets, such as CC-130 Hercules, CP-140 Aurora, CF-18 Hornet, and CH-149 helicopter. He is heavily involved in the development of a new aircraft lifting paradigm, so-called “Holistic structural integrity process (HOLSIP)”, along with other prestigious experts from the USA, the UK, Australia, and Japan. He is a member of ASTM E08 and co-chairing a task group on variability, statistics, and probabilistic modeling. His research interests are fatigue life prediction, corrosion and fatigue interaction modeling, probabilistic fracture mechanics, and risk analysis of aircraft structures with environmental affects. He has over 120 publications including internal reports, conference, and journal papers.