From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Sun May 26 2002 - 09:37:37 MDT
Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>I believe I saw a news item that indicated the 747 was one
>of the oldest in the China airlines fleet and was only
>a month away from "retirement".
>
That caught my attention too. Compare metal fatigue curves
for aluminum and steel. Steel fatigues to a certain point and
never really gets much weaker after that. Aluminum on the other
hand, keeps right on going down.
Compare the steel fatigue curves on the top right of page 7
of this document
http://www.lambda-research.com/228.pdf
to page 4 of this document shows typical aluminum behavior:
http://www.aws.org/wj/supplement/Gean/ARTICLE2.PDF
This will give you some cheerful and comforting things to
think about next time you go hurtling thru the sky at near
the speed of sound in an aluminum tube. spike
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