About Us
Our Mission
The ever-increasing demands on engineered structures require advanced materials and fabrication techniques to enable structures to reach and maintain desired levels of
performance and reliability
Physics-based simulations of structural degradation and failure modes have recently been developed that enhance the life assessment methodologies available to industry for both design and sustainment. It is now possible to quantify the effects of intrinsic physical discontinuities and of particularly severe conditions, such as fatigue, corrosion, fretting, and wear on structure
These advancements will help enable industry to shrink the gap between safe-life and damage tolerance lifing methodologies and meld the two into a unified HOListic Structural Integrity Process capable of positively impacting all aspects of safety, cost, and availability. These advancements are relevant to all industries, including aerospace, nuclear, and civil infrastructure
Workshop History
For the past twenty-three years, representatives from various countries including the United States, Canada, Poland, Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, and Germany have met to discuss the development of an evolving physics-based life methodology, known as the Holistic Structural Integrity Process (HOLSIP). A variety of representatives have attended these workshops including people from government agencies (for instance, National Defense organizations), commercial organizations, academics, and maintenance providers so that the appropriate requirements could be included in this life methodology.
Although the original workshop discussion concepts were metallic aircraft structure, HOLSIP is a widely applicable design and sustainment paradigm. HOLSIP applications have included polymer matrix composite (PMC) aerospace structures, civil infrastructure, nuclear power, oil and gas, naval uses, and heavy equipment. We encourage participants from any subject area as the resulting creativity from open discussion amongst experts from various engineering domains is a unique feature of the workshop.
Workshop Technical Goals
HOLSIP contains methods that take into account both cycle and time dependent environmental effects in assessing structural life and residual strength capability, with the ability to account for time in and out of operation.
HOLSIP is developed to augment and enhance traditional safe-life and damage tolerance paradigms to provide a powerful design and sustainment tool. As a design tool, it is capable of determining the life cycle of a structure from the early stages of damage formation to final failure by encompassing material selection, structural design, manufacturing procedures, and inspection and maintenance requirements. As a sustainment tool, HOLSIP can be applied at any stage during the service life of an engineered structure when damage is detected or variations in usage and/or operational environment are encountered.
The basic material microstructure and surface integrity resulting from the manufacturing process are built into the physics-based models in HOLSIP in conjunction with other intrinsic and extrinsic factors such as residual stress from cold working and laser peening in metals, residual stress from processing in PMCs, environmental/chemical exposure, maintenance/accidental damage, and age degradation in service. Probabilistic techniques are used in HOLSIP to account for the uncertainties of material, manufacturing, loading, and inspection.