Fatigue and Corrosion Solutions for Aerospace

Providing metal fatigue solutions to the aerospace industry through the understanding, measurement, and control of residual stress.

Our expertise in materials testing and surface enhancement technologies allows us to provide you with a unique, total solutions approach to improve the performance of your aircraft components.

Laboratory Services for Aerospace

The pre-eminent source of residual stress measurement and analysis worldwide is Lambda Research, a part of the Lambda Technologies Group. We provide failure analysis, lifing analysis, residual stress measurement, retained austenite, fatigue testing, and many other materials testing services. Expect quality-driven, reliable results in a timely manner. Discover our full range of laboratory offerings by exploring here.

We are certified by many major corporations for materials testing, including General Electric, Honeywell, Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney, and Babcock & Wilcox. Lambda is the only S400 lab in the world certified by General Electric for residual stress measurement. Explore our certifications and accreditations here.

Lambda has built a trusted reputation with over a million completed measurements and over 200 years of combined experience. Our certified residual stress engineers offer precise results and thorough analysis. You’ll receive a complete solution, not just data.

Surface Enhancement Solutions for Aerospace

Are you combatting high cycle fatigue, fretting, foreign object damage, or other damage mechanisms in your aircraft components? Extend the service life of your parts with our reliable surface enhancement solutions.

Our primary method for surface enhancement and fatigue crack mitigation is to introduce designed or engineered compressive residual stress (compression). Engineered compression cancels tensile stresses in critical locations without altering the original material or design. The depth, magnitude, and distribution of the compressive residual stresses are customized for each component and application to produce optimal performance.

This starts with determining the minimum compressive residual stress required to mitigate the damage mechanism. We do this using our proprietary Fatigue Design Diagram. By knowing the mean and alternating service stresses, we can calculate the compression required to ensure adequate damage tolerance. This is indicated by the triangular region marked “SAFE” in the diagram.

Once the engineered residual stress field is designed, it’s applied to the parts using mechanical surface enhancement processes like shot peening, laser shock peening, deep rolling, or Low Plasticity Burnishing (LPB®).

We typically use Low Plasticity Burnishing or similar controlled burnishing processes to introduce designed compression. LPB provides several benefits over other processes, like minimal cold work and repeatable, deep compression. Low cold work significantly improves compression stability at high temperatures and is more effective in mitigating surface damage. LPB can also create a smooth, mirror-like surface finish on processed parts, making inspections easier and improving turbine blade efficiency.

Additional Benefits of LPB in Aerospace Applications

• LPB is performed with conventional CNC machine tools or robots in a standard shop floor environment
• LPB can be implemented during initial manufacturing or during maintenance/repair operations
• LPB is easier to implement, less complicated, and more precisely controlled than laser shock peening.
• LPB increases the time in service for aerospace components, decreasing maintenance & replacement costs.

LPB is currently used in the production of a variety of rotating and stationary commercial aerospace and military turbine components, including blades, vanes, IBRs, disks, rotors, and others. The process has also been successfully utilized to address corrosion or stress corrosion cracking in propeller bores, landing gear, and fuselage applications.

Here are some of our success stories in the aerospace industry.

• Eliminating Fretting Fatigue in CFM56 Turbine Blade Dovetails
• Mitigating FOD and Fatigue Failures in Harrier Vanes
• Preventing Crack Propagation from Stress Corrosion Cracking in Propeller Bores
• Solving the Corrosion Cracking Problem in MD80/88 Landing Gear
• Preventing Fatigue Cracks in Floor Beams Caused by Stress Concentrations
• Improving FOD and Corrosion Tolerance in T56 Compressor Blades

You can find additional case studies here or find more detailed explanations of these applications in our technical papers.