This work offers a comprehensive solution to A course question that is common in Mechanical Engineering curriculum, and that, to this end, had remained unsatisfactorily answered. The question has been used by professors, year after year, to test the understanding of students in the area of structural failure. The question appears mostly in the exact form presented herein, or in a tweaked variation of the same. This work provides a step-by-step solution, with explanations and figures to help the student understand the entire context of the question. All figures and references have been cited.
The question requires the student to briefly describe the the ‘mechanical’ reasons for the catastrophic structural failure of Aloha Flight 243, which occured in 1988. While there occurs plenty of infomation about the cause of the accident, there has not been a dedicated elaboration of the specific ‘mechanical’ reasons that led to the failure, and which could be used to answer this course question.
