Professor Reggie Pelloux MIT fatigue and fracture mentorship

Tom credits Pelloux (ScD MIT, then Boeing, then MIT faculty) as his fatigue-and-fracture teacher. Frames Boeing's fracture-mechanics culture. ## Figures referenced (recurring numeric anchors, not cases)

[Tom puts the image up on the projector.] See, there it is — everybody standing there on top of the aircraft. They're in the middle of the aircraft. Pretty scary. To think — flying along, and the roof flies off like in a tornado.

Aloha Airlines was the fatigue leader. Around the rivet holes, there was no fracture that Boeing didn't know about. Boeing has some of the top fracture people in the world. The guy who taught me fatigue and fracture was Professor Reggie Pelloux, who got his ScD here, then went to Boeing, and came back as a faculty member and specialized in fatigue and fracture. Boeing has top-notch people, and they pay attention to safety. This was one where they got broadsided. Only one person died, but it was a wake-up call for how to do your averaging of cycles. You have to look at the outlier — Aloha Airlines. The critical flaw sizes for the sheet metal skin are like several feet — they had big cracks. But nobody was looking for them because nobody expected them. They were the outlier leader.