well, I do remember the news you mentioned about some advanced technology FC-31 used, but I think back then the picture came with that news is rather a very big picture of the fuselage mainframe, rather the whole thing.
yes, I do understand that, and the static model was my original suspicion, but siege suggested it was a
so that makes me even more confused
We know that SAC used 3D printed titanium bulkheads for the FC-31, and it was mentioned in some of the same sources that the J-20 also uses the same method for their bulkheads, but we only have good confirmation for the former. More importantly though, even if both use 3D printed bulkheads, the FC-31 is supposed to involve a lot more manufacturing innovations than just that single item.
Yes, actually. They need a full reproduction to study the strain on the entire frame.
having control surfaces attached in a static test frame does not reproduce the stress deflected control surfaces impose on a airframe in flight. if anything, attaching actual control surfaces probably hinder the attachment of actuators that would statically simulate the control surface load on the airframe, th
No. You don’t need to reproduce the exact strain conditions encountered in flight for a static test. You *do* however want to map what the strain looks like at various load conditions across a whole representative airframe. The load specific strain values, not the conditions under which you encounter them, tell you everything you need to know about whether that structure will hold up under your expected loads, especially over time. Remember, one of the central objectives of a static test frame is examine long term wear and tear. It doesn’t make sense to exclude control surfaces, which are some of the most crucial high wear structures of the frame, and even more so, are essential load bearing structures that will be on the receiving end of a lot of the forces acting on other parts of the frame. If you exclude the control surfaces you may not even get a representative picture of the rest of the frame, since the forces on the structures transmit across the whole body of a plane and you would be missing areas that forces would have otherwise transmitted to if they were present.
