The historical developments and trendencies of building block approach and testing pyramid

Abstract

Establishing testing pyramid with building block approach is a widely accepted process for the structural strength verification of large aircraft. The historical developments and trendencies of building block approach and testing pyramid are briefly summaried in this paper. In the development process of US military aircraft of different types, the statistics results of the established strength testing pyramid are introduced. The amount of experiment content and the proportion of expenditure are compared from four aspects of experiment level, object, purpose and type to illustrate the importance and economy of the basic level test verification work in the strength verification testing pyramid. The development trendencies, application and limitations of the virtual tests for aircraft developments are also introduced, which can provide the reliable means of compliance to the developments of full scale components and whole aircraft.

Keywords

• building block approach
• testing pyramid
• strength verification
• physical test
• virtual test