Majority of service failures in aircraft engine components occur by fatigue and it amounts to about 60% of the total failures. A number of factors influence the fatigue life of a component in service, viz., (i) complex stress cycles, (ii) engineering design, (iii) manufacturing and inspection, (iv) service conditions and environment and (v) material of construction. However, almost all service failures can ultimately be attributed to defects of various types introduced mostly inadvertently in various stages of manufacture of the component or otherwise. A large number of such failures have been investigated in the author's laboratory over the past many years and a few of them are highlighted in this paper.
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