The Department of Defense (DoD) is continuously evaluating different methodologies to reduce cost, increase availability, and maintain safety of future air vehicle systems. Recently, DoD has emphasized the development of Integrated Systems Health Management (ISHM) techniques. The ISHM process provides the appropriate architecture to determine system level health based on combined assessments of the various subsystem conditions and, as necessary, interacts with flight control systems to ensure mission success. Since a vehicle's structure is one of its most critical subsystems, structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques are being developed. These SHM techniques offer unique benefits for emerging air vehicle systems, which are likely to include advanced materials and advanced structural concepts. Composite materials are expected to be used extensively and, to further complicate matters, the composite structures may also include embedded electronics or sensors. Advanced structural concepts, such as morphing structures or conformal array antennas, will be integrated with other vehicle systems such as the flight controls or avionics. As a result, assessing the current state of these structures will be critical. In addition to vehicle design, maintenance and repair techniques for future air vehicles will likely be modified. For fielded vehicles, a major sustainment cost driver in the air vehicle fleet is unscheduled maintenance. By utilizing SHM techniques to provide an accurate assessment of the current state of a vehicle, DoD intends to migrate to condition-based maintenance (CBM), rather than the current schedule-based approach. CBM will improve maintenance agility and responsiveness for quicker turnaround times, increase operational availability, and reduce life cycle total ownership cost. Structural hot spot monitoring techniques will be used for cases where the anticipated damage location is known. Maintenance of future air vehicles also will include greater use of bonded repair techniques. SHM will enable the use of such technology by verifying the integrity of the bonded repair and allowing any existing damage to be monitored. Lastly, to fully exploit the benefits of future design and maintenance techniques, SHM should be considered during the design process rather than retrofitting a SHM system after a vehicle has been fielded. Consideration of SHM during the design process will allow structures to be designed such that any significant degradation can easily be sensed and will allow the number and location of sensors to be optimized. The current paper discusses the role of SHM for future air vehicle applications.
The role of structural health monitoring for future air vehicles
2006
8 Seiten, 4 Quellen
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Englisch
AIAA-2006-1952 The Role of Structural Health Monitoring for Future Air Vehicles
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