Durability testing of an aircraft structural health monitoring system

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an emerging technology leading to systems capable of continuously monitoring structures for damage. Aerospace structures have one of the highest payoffs for SHM systems because damage can lead to catastrophic and expensive failures. Prior work in SHM has focused on damage detection methods and sensor optimization, however, the topics of durability, reliability, and longevity of these systems has not been addressed. A framework for developing SHM durability test standards for aerospace vehicles is offered. Existing standards for the durability of commercial and military aircraft avionics are identified, and the relation to SHM systems is described. Using these existing standards, a test matrix and testing specifics are developed to assess the durability of SHM systems. Careful consideration is necessary in defining the 'system' under testing. Criteria are defined to establish whether a sensor/structural system has been affected by the various environments. Extensive experimental results from durability testing of a surface-mounted piezoelectric Lamb-wave SHM system are presented. Environments tested include temperature extremes, humidity, fluid susceptibility, altitude, and mechanical strain.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Chambers, Jeffrey Thomas

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Brian L. Wardle.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37849

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37849