Simon,
No, airplanes are made out of very hard (and crack prone) aluminum alloys. (Typically, 7075 and 2024). Additionally, airplanes are typically only made with a very small safety factor as an airplane has to fly and everyone knows it is very difficult and expensive to get extra weight (more safety) off the ground. Finally, airplanes can't just pull over on the side of the road when the crap hits the fan.
On this car, we observed as strict of weight discipline as was reasonable. We used 14,000 psi as the endurance limit on the FEA (Finite Element Anaylsis) tests. (The aluminum doesn't yield until 30,000 psi.) The chassis should last forever. It is amazing the amount of material that can actually be removed when you run a part through FEA.
It is extremely interesting to design a part and then run it through FEA. You think you are cool until Cosmos tells you otherwise. After the tests, it is amazing to see where the computer tells you you have too much material and when you think about the colors you wonder why you were so dumb in the first place. (We call FEA "looking for rainbows" as different stresses show up as different colors). What is really interesting is when you actually REMOVE material and make a part stronger by shifting the load paths around. As you can imagine, we were very concerned with keeping our customer happy and him off of You Tube.
David
