| To some extent. "Mistakes were made" as they say. But its a lot more nuanced than that. Metal fatigue is understood because we have a mechanistic understanding of what it is, how fatigue accumulates, and how different metal crystal strictures respond to fatigue. We know, for example, that metals like aluminum will always fail from fatigue given enough loading cycles, no matter how small the applied stress. We also know that other metals, like iron and titanium, have a "fatigue limit" below which fatigue doesn't accumulate and these metals can endure infinite loading cycles. We have, to some extent, the ability to repair metal fatigue. We build airplanes from aluminum knowing their aluminum hulls and wings will fail (whereas if it were built with Ti fatigue failure could be eliminated) because metal fatigue is very predictable and we can withdraw a hull from service after a regulatory determined number of landings. So yes, until we developed our current understanding of fatigue, people died. But, often, this was from a callous disregard to traditionally accepted safety factors by cowboy "innovators". (Im a materials eng. PhD in polymers w/ background in Eng. Phys. Im not a metallurgist for what its worth) |