Thermoelastic investigation of an aluminum helicopter component under non-adiabatic conditions

Thermoelastic Stress Analysis (TSA) has been used to analyze an aeronautic cross shaped structural component, composed of several riveted parts, made of different aluminum alloys. Due to the aluminum high thermal diffusivity, some parts of the component were not in adiabatic conditions during the test, causing an attenuation of the temperature peaks, linked to the stress distribution. Furthermore the presence of a thick primer coating altered the TSA results on the component especially at high frequencies. After the removal of the primer from some parts of the surface, a correction procedure was applied to compensate for the heat diffusion, thus obtaining quantitative results, which showed to be in very good accordance with the stress values obtained by some strain gauges.