The thermal protection systems of spacecraft are vulnerable to damage from impacts by foreign objects moving at high velocities. This paper describes a proposed novel structural health monitoring system that will detect, locate and evaluate the damage resulting from such impacts. This system consists of a network of intelligent local agents, each of which controls a network of piezoelectric acoustic emission sensors to detect and locate an impact, and a network of optical fibre Bragg grating sensors to evaluate the effect of the impact damage by means of a thermographic technique. The paper concentrates on two issues that are critical to the successful implementation of the proposed SHM system: measurement of the elastic properties of the thermal protection material, knowledge of which is essential to the design and operation of the acoustic emission sensor network; and investigation of the practical feasibility of a switched network of optical fibre sensors.
Structural Health Monitoring of Space Vehicle Thermal Protection Systems
2013
13 Seiten
Conference paper
English
Impedance-based structural health monitoring of thermal protection systems [6176-22]
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