FAIL-SAFE, SAFE-LIFE AND DAMAGE TOLERANCE

DESIGN PHYLOSOPHIES

1- FAIL-SAFE

This type of design philosophy considers “the effects of failures and combinations of failures in
defining a safe design”1; this means that the principal idea of this philosophy is to see how a failure
or failures could cause a negative effect in the safety of the design. The fail-safe design concept
has two different meanings, one for structures and another one for the systems. Fail-Safe for a
structure refers to the residual strength after the sustaining of damage, while the Fail-Safe concept
for a system refers to the functional implications when a failure occurs and the possibilities that a
failure occurs.

The Fail-Safe for structures is governed by 14 CFR 25.571 and the methods of compliance are
outlined in the AC 25.571-1C. The Fail-Safe for systems is specified in the 14 CFR 25.1309 2.

2- SAFE-LIFE

This design philosophy refers to the period of operation of the component or system; it means
that the component or system is designed to not fail in a certain period of time, the desire with
this philosophy is to extend as long as possible the service life time of the component or system.
The design under this philosophy requires a testing and an analysis to estimate the service life
time of a component, but due to the inability of predict the specific service time of a component is
necessary to include a good safety factor to ensure that a catastrophic failure will not occur in any
case.

3- DAMAGE TOLERANCE

This design philosophy is focus in the fact that a very important component can resist a failure due
to some preexistent damage without risking the safe operation of the other components or
systems and until the damage can be repaired. This philosophy is focus in two points 3 with the
assumption that already exist a crack in the structure. The first point is the possibility to establish
the fracture load for a specific crack size. The second point is to predict the period of time for a
new crack to grow to the same size and can cause a fracture in the structure. At this point is very
important to implement a very good maintenance program that allows detecting all the damages
before they can reduce the strength of the structure before the acceptable limit.

1
From the web page: http://aviationglossary.com/aviation-safety-terms/fail-safe-design-concept/ ,
consulted the 9 of August at 9:00 pm.
2
From the web page: http://aviationglossary.com/aviation-safety-terms/fail-safe-design-concept/ ,
consulted the 9 of August at 9:00 pm
3
From the PDF document: DAMAGE TOLERANCE OF AERO STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS, TATA consultancy
services.