The emergence of civil aviation as a means of mass transportation is primarily due to the large scale construction of jet airplanes in the past 30 years or so. A large number of these jet airplanes is currently operating at or beyond their designed fatigue lives. Thus, the structural integrity of these aging airplanes has become an issue of major concern to all nations of the world. To bring the needed technical and research focus on the issues involved in the life-enhancement and safety-assurance of aging airplanes, the Federal Aviation Administration sponsored a symposium in Atlanta, GA, USA, during 20-22 March 1990. This symposium, under the title "International Symposium on Structural Integrity of Aging Airplanes· was organized jointly be the Georgia Institute of Technology (Center for Computational Mechanics) and the Transportation Systems Center (Cambridge, MA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Industrial and academic experts from several countries in North America, Europe and Asia, were invited to discuss their experiences and proposed solutions. This monograph contains the original papers that represent the expanded and edited versions of the talks presented at this symposium. This book aims to bring the collective experience, from across the world, with problems related to the structural integrity of aging airplanes to the attention of the professional and research community at large - in the hope that it may stimulate further fruitful research on this important topic of global concern.
