The Failure of the De Havilland Comet Aircraft :: Aerospace Technology Aircrafts Essays

The Failure of the De Havilland Comet Aircraft Following World War II and the jet engine technology that emerged largely toward its end, aerospace engineers knew well that the technology had great potential for use in the commercial aviation industry. The Comet was the first aircraft to utilize jet propulsion; however, its designers failed to consider the metallurgy of the aircraft’s materials under flight conditions or the consequences of their atypical window design. The aircraft was designed by Britain’s De Havilland Aircraft Company and entered service in May 1952. After a year of service, however, the design issues mentioned above resulted in the failure of several Comet aircraft. Extensive evaluations revealed that repeated pressurization stress on the aircraft’s main cabin had caused its structure to fail. At the time when Comet development had begun, De Havilland was aware that Boeing and other leading aircraft manufacturers were also considering jet-driven planes. If De Havilland could build the first jetliner, not only the company but Britain itself could be poised to lead the aerospace industry. With 90% of airline passengers everywhere traveling on Boeing aircraft in 1939 according to Pushkar, R.G. (2002), the British government had been anxious for a development such as the Comet and supported the project enthusiastically. Pressure to develop the Comet before other companies could release their own jetliners likely contributed to some testing negligence at De Havilland. The British Overseas Airways Corporation ordered 14 Comet 1s at  £450,000 each as soon as the aircraft’s design had been decided upon (History Heads: â€Å"The Comet cover-up†), and this was a significant incentive for De Havilland to complete the Comet safely and swiftly. If the B OAC placed so much confidence in De Havilland’s product and other airlines could witness the aircraft’s success, this would garner tremendous support for the Comet and De Havilland overseas. In its design of the Comet, De Havilland used two nonstandard design techniques that contributed significantly to the aircraft failures. The first was that the company heavily employed Redux metal-to-metal bonding in which a strong, light aluminum alloy was fixed to the frame of the aircraft with a very strong adhesive during the Redux process. The engineers based their decision to use that technique primarily on the fact that the Comet’s initial design had a large weight and that its four Ghost engines, also built by De Havilland, could not support it with their thrust.