Aircraft Structural TestingAerospace Structural Durability and Fatigue Testing

Structural Durability and Fatigue Testing Overview

Prior to its maiden flight, aircrafts undergo rigorous full-scale testing on specialized test stands to simulate anticipated operational, maximum and ultimate loads. These comprehensive tests precisely evaluate structural behavior under diverse conditions, ensuring early detection of potential design flaws and guaranteeing the highest levels of safety and reliability in service.

Full-scale structural durability and fatigue testing typically last a few years simulating several times the lifetime of the aircraft ensuring designed structural integrity and remains essential in aircraft testing because of the following critical reasons:

• Safety: Ensures that the overall structure and all elements support their intended loads without collapsing, protecting occupants and users from harm, 

• Life-time Durability: Helps structures withstand environmental factors like weathering, seismic activity, and aging, extending their lifespan,

• Real-World Complexity: Simulates combined stresses (vibration, gusts, pressurization cycles), reveals how joints, welds, and assemblies behave under long-term cyclic loads, that component-level tests can’t replicate,

• Cost-effectiveness: Prevents costly recalls, repairs and maintenance by identifying and addressing potential issues early,

• Failure Mode Discovery: Uncovers unexpected cracks or fatigue paths in full-system geometry (e.g., wing-fuselage interfaces),

• Performance: Ensures that structures perform their designed functions reliably throughout their intended lifespan,

• Validation of Simulation Models: Benchmarks and refines digital twin/FEA predictions with empirical data,

• Regulatory Compliance: Mandated by FAA/EASA to certify airworthiness and safe operational life, maximum and ultimate load cases.

Bottom Line: While structural fatigue simulations of components based on Finite Element Methods (FEM) as part of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), and structural testing  of components reduce time to market and risk, full-scale structural and fatigue testing is the gold standard to ensure that the aircraft survives decades of real-world operation. 

Example: Airbus A350’s full-scale test subjected the airframe to 165,000 simulated flights (2.5x design life) to validate safety margins

Data Acquisition Software for Aircraft Structural Durability Testing

Dewesoft offers measurement and data acquisition solutions for structural durability and fatigue testing, giving manufacturers a cockpit validating stress and fatigue, improving durability, reliability and safety of structural designs. Software is the key in getting insights you can trust.

Award winning DewesoftX software with on the fly data analysis

• Handles thousands of channels with low-latency processing.

• Online and post process data analysis in one software.

• Cluster your signals without losing overview (wing left, wing right, fuselage, etc.).

• NET technology acquires data from multiple clients serving multiple users at the same time.

• Check your channel health with a mouse click before start.

• Set up sophisticated notifications and alarms, for also safety interlocks.

• Record long-term sensor and signal data - uninterrupted, multiple files.

• On-the-fly calculations with strain gage rosettes, math channels, statistics, filtering, integrals, derivatives, strain-life (ε-N), damage calculation (S-N, material database), class counting, cycle counter, crack growth models, add your own.

• Powerful real-time data visualization and analysis: 2D (y-t + prediction lines, y-x, polar diagram), 3D animated finite element (FE) also ready for modal analysis.

• Use multiple visualization panels (tabs) on multiple screens.

• Remote control and visualization.

• Automate your large data sets flow with the sequencer and modern scripting.

• Acquisition of digital data from standard Avionics busses (ARINC-429, MIL-STD-1553, CAN and many more).

• Calibrate all channels with the same software.

• … and more to come on your demand.

After 25 years of DewesoftX software development and many hours of improvements, you can make the award-winning and future proof data acquisition software your next generation cockpit. We have earned the trust of thousands of test engineers around the world, simplifying all relevant steps from setup to advanced data analysis of complex datasets.

Testbed Control Integration 

State-of-the-art structural durability and fatigue testing programs rely on test controllers applying customizable loading profiles around the complete airframe structure. 

Automated test sequences allow a stepped loading and drive highly synchronized multi-axis actuators (servo-hydraulics, electric). This can be extended by environmental simulation (thermal, altitude, combined loads).

The applied load profile is visualized. Safety interlocks & limit checks prevent overloads. Alarms allow an automatic shutdown for critical conditions.  

Dewesoft’s data acquisition solutions offer several ways for bi-directional integration with test control systems such as MTS, Moog, etc.:

• EtherCAT

• Ethernet (openDAQ, MODBUS, OPC/UA and MQTT)

• CAN bus

• analog/digital I/O

A bi-directional integrated approach of your measurement equipment with load control streamlines your test setup and calibration, and simplifies the acquisition of high-quality data, accelerating your next test program from small to high-channel setups, from lab to in-flight.

Understand Structural Behavior with Modal Testing and Analysis

To ensure component or airframe integrity under real-world loads, it’s essential to understand how structures vibrate. Dewesoft’s modal testing and analysis tools help identify natural frequencies, mode shapes, and damping characteristics—key data for validating finite element models and ensuring dynamic stability.

Whether using impact hammers, shakers, or roving sensor setups, Dewesoft offers scalable solutions for everything from component-level testing to full-airframe analysis. With intuitive setup, real-time animation, and seamless integration into simulation workflows, engineers gain deeper insight into structural dynamics—crucial for both development and certification.

🔗 Explore full modal analysis capabilities