Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You would expect things to break during a stress test. Except, the whole point of the test is to stress the plane and to have nothing break. The test is designed to make sure the aircraft has built-in safety (i.e. is over engineered). When the A380 was attempting to earn it's certification it failed a similar static wing test: http://www.airmech.co.uk/forums/showthread.php/5340-A380-Win...
>Except, the whole point of the test is to stress the plane and to have nothing break. What? No it's not. The entire point of these tests is specifically to break things. If nothing breaks, they did not perform the test correctly. >When the A380 was attempting to earn it's certification it failed a similar static wing test: No, it didn't. It passed the test handily. The wing broke well beyond the max load limit, whic…
When you do these types of tests you are testing for a expected outcome.
If you do a test and the outcome is un-expected (i.e. the fuselage fails prematurely) it means your engineering and the expectations built around that engineering are wrong.