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Bulkhead Cracks In F-35B Won’t Slow Fielding, Marines Say
http://breakingdefense.com/2014/02/bulkhead-cracks-in-f-35b-wont-slow-fielding-marines-say/Bulkhead Cracks In F-35B Wont Slow Fielding, Marines Say
By Colin Clark
on February 21, 2014 at 11:11 AM
AFA WINTER, ORLANDO: Some 9,400 hours of ground testing of the F-35B exposed serious cracks in the planes aluminum bulkheads, sending the Joint Strike Fighter program and contractor Lockheed Martin scrambling to come up with long-term engineering solutions.
The Marines say any correction will be made later to their aircraft and will not slow initial fielding of the most complex version of the Joint Strike Fighter.
The bulkhead crack was found in the ground test vehicle during durability testing after more than 9,400 hours, Capt. Richard Ulsh, aviation spokesman for the Marines, said in an email. This event does not impact the IOC date of the F-35B, which the Marine Corps still plans to achieve in July 2015. This finding only affects the future modification schedules to our aircraft so they can achieve the intended service life of the aircraft, which is 8,000 hours.
Ulsh noted that the goal of durability testing is to stress the aircraft to its structural limits so that issues and corrective actions can be identified. These discoveries are expected and planned for in a developmental program.
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Bulkhead Cracks In F-35B Won’t Slow Fielding, Marines Say (Original Post)
unhappycamper
Feb 2014
OP
denverbill
(11,489 posts)1. 8000/24 = 333.33 days. Not exactly a long expected lifespan.
caraher
(6,276 posts)2. they won't be flying 24/7
I'd be surprised if they were in the air much more than an hour a day, on average. For comparison...
The F-15 initial operational requirement was for a service life of 4,000 hours. Testing completed in 1973 demonstrated that the F-15 could sustain 16,000 hours of flight. Subsequently operational use was more severely stressful than the original design specification. With an average usage of 270 aircraft flight hours per year, by the early 1990s the F-15C fleet was approaching its service-design-life limit of 4,000 flight hours. Following successful airframe structural testing, the F-15C was extended to an 8,000-hour service life limit. An 8,000-hour service limit provides current levels of F-15Cs through 2010. The F-22 program was initially justified on the basis of an 8,000 flight hour life projection for the F-15. This was consistent with the projected lifespan of the most severely stressed F-15Cs, which have averaged 85% of flight hours in stressful air-to-air missions, versus the 48% in the original design specification.