Boeing 777 Wing Test
Boeing 777 Wing Test on HackerTube: recommended by 2 Hacker News commenters across 2 separate months, 2013–2023.
A short video of a Boeing 777 wing being tested to destruction, finally breaking at 154 percent of its designed limit load. The wing is flexed upward until it fails.
What HN commenters said
10 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
sjm-lbmJul 2018Recommends
Since you are posting on HN and I'm guessing you are technically minded, you might find this really interesting: ▶ this video - it's a video from a documentary about the development of the Boeing 777. Specifically, the video shows a test where they bend/stress the 777 wings to the point where they actually snap. Spoiler alert: they snap at orders of magnitude more flex than you've ever seen. Even for very severe turbulence (like you experienced), it's very comforting for me to know (via that video evidence) that even if I haven't seen turbulence this bad, the people that made the airplane definitely thought about it.
in “Ask HN: How to overcome fear of flying?” · View on HN
vanderZwanFeb 2015Recommends
Planes come to mind. Basically, back in the age of the slide ruler, engineers "overcompensated" in durability. This is why older planes are much heavier (so more inefficient and costly to run) but also last forever. PS: Not to crap on the structural engineering of more modern planes, don't get me wrong! Check out this video: ▶ this video
in “The Last of the Typewriter Men” · View on HN
mulmenFeb 2023Cites it
The famous video is of a 777 wing. I don't believe any similar footage exists for the 747 or if the test was even performed decades before. ▶ this video
in “Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight” · View on HN
jvanderbotNov 2019Cites it
This sounds fine. It's a catastrophic failure test. They push until it breaks, then it broke, and they were very close to their designed target (within 1%). If they had gone 1% past their designed target, they would have been upset, as they could have made the plane lighter. They were 1% short of design limit, they are upset because they'll have to add reinforcement. Have you seen the wing failure test? I worked for the company that did these tests (they did them before I worked there), and they still talk about how upset the engineers were that it went over spec in strength. ▶ this video
in “Boeing 777X’s fuselage split dramatically during September stress test” · View on HN
zuppyNov 2019Cites it
there is no way to fail gracefully, because what this test does is to test the breaking point. when there is such a stress, there's no middle ground. for example, look how the wing was tested: ▶ this video
in “Boeing 777X’s fuselage split dramatically during September stress test” · View on HN
cyberferretSep 2019Cites it
It's a stress test. You would expect things to break during a stress test. > "They loaded it up well beyond capacity and bent its wings in an extreme manner, in a way almost certain to never happen in the real world." Here is another video of a 777 wing test where it broke at 154% of the [s/normal/maximum theoretical/] load - a bit beyond what was expected by the engineering team. ▶ this video
in “Door blows off Boeing 777X during stress test” · View on HN
Show 4 more comments
mklSep 2019Cites it
It's not a matter of interpretation or tricky language. The video says "of" [1] so it's 1.54 times the design limit. [1] ▶ this video
in “Door blows off Boeing 777X during stress test” · View on HN
cesarbMay 2019Cites it
> There is no such thing as 'destructive aircraft testing' Actually, there is: ▶ this video "This Boeing 777 wing was tested to destruction, finally breaking at one fifty four percent of the designed limit load."
in “Boeing’s Own Test Pilots Lacked Key Details of 737 Max Flight-Control System” · View on HN
toomuchtodoOct 2014Cites it
One of the wing tests: ▶ this video "This Boeing 777 wing was tested to destruction, finally breaking at one fifty four percent (154%) of the designed limit load."
in “Aboard a Cargo Colossus: Maersk’s New Container Ships” · View on HN
beachstartupJul 2013Cites it
▶ this video video of boeing stress-testing 777 wings by deflecting them up with cables, against a stationary fuselage first thing that came to mind after seeing the video of the crashed plane do a cartwheel on its wing.
in “Video shows plane's moment of impact at SFO” · View on HN