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Re: Whitley test "produced a failure at 98% of the design load" is that good?
98% is obviously not great, but it's not a desaster either, and without knowing if any measures were taken afterwards to bring it to 100% or above (such as with the Airbus A380 that failed the wing load test at 147% instead of 150%, or 98% of test requirement), it's impossible to say whether this had any impact in the real world. Even without mitigating measures it might not have had any impact, since you would need to know first what design load actually was (and in the era of pre-computing, I believe engineers were far more generous with margins than they are today). For example, (making this up) design load could have been 200% of maximum expected load in a dive at maximum angle. In which case 98% is still more than fine.
Please note that none of the above is supposed to argue that the Whitley was a great plane.
All the best
Andreas
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