Preliminary Results of a Structural Health Monitoring System Application for Real-Time Debonding Detection on a...

Area of Science:

• Aerospace Engineering
• Materials Science
• Structural Health Monitoring

Background:

• Condition-based maintenance (CBM) in aircraft requires reliable methods for detecting structural flaws.
• Existing damage detection methods often rely on structural or load models, which can be complex and limiting.
• Real-time monitoring is crucial for timely intervention and preventing catastrophic failures in aerospace structures.

Purpose of the Study:

• To report the outcomes of a real-time Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system for debonding flaw detection.
• To investigate a damage detection method independent of structural or load models for aircraft components.
• To demonstrate the system's capability in detecting artificially deployed flaws in a composite aircraft spar.

Main Methods:

• Development and real-time implementation of a novel algorithm, Local High-Edge Onset (LHEO), for damage detection.
• Application of the SHM system to a full-scale composite aircraft spar under bending loads.
• Utilizing Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) arrays, an interrogator, and custom software (Matlab/Python) for data acquisition and analysis.

Main Results:

• The SHM system successfully detected two artificially deployed kissing bond type flaws in real-time.
• The LHEO algorithm identified damage by detecting edge onsets in both space and time domains.
• The real-time implementation was achieved on a consumer-grade computer, demonstrating practical feasibility.

Conclusions:

• The proposed real-time SHM system, utilizing the LHEO algorithm, is effective for debonding flaw detection in aircraft structures.
• The model-agnostic approach simplifies damage detection, making it suitable for condition-based maintenance strategies.
• The system's real-time capability and efficient implementation pave the way for enhanced aircraft safety and maintenance.