This research aims at supporting the development of non-invasive structural health monitoring (SHM) methodologies and technologies for aeronautical applications.
Ultrasonics and Instrumentation
Structural Health Monitoring
The main purpose of SHM is to detect defects or damage at an early stage in a totally non-invasive manner and without forcing the aircraft to be off-duty.
A popular technique within SHM is the use of guided waves. Guided waves are a class of mechanical waves that propagate in structures, structural elements or waveguides that have characteristic dimensions comparable to the wave's wavelength. Guided waves are acknowledged as the most promising and versatile SHM technology.
Guided wave SHM can be 'passive' or 'active' using transducers in receive only, or transmit and receive configurations.
The figure below shows an example application of Guided wave SHM. Using SolidWorks and COMSOL modelling packages, an aeroplane wing has been constructed with transducers attached.
In this example, an active transmit piezoelectric (PZT) transducer sensor is used to assess damage, by transmission of a guided wave and reception of reflections.
A hardware/software system generates and receives guided waves that investigate the structure itself. By applying signal processing procedures to the signals recorded by the transducers, guided wave based methodologies try to evaluate the component integrity.
Guided wave SHM provides the possibility to detect several type of defects, such as delaminations, debonding, fibers breakings, indentations, of different sizes, that may or may not be visible.
More information can be found in publications
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