The NASA/McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper-Experimental Advanced (DC-XA) re-usable rocket program included the development of a Structural Health Monitoring System (SHMS) to acquire and present structural health information to the DC-XA flight team in near-real-time. The SHMS was successfully demonstrated in 1996 during flight tests of the DC-XA at White Sands Missile Range where it was used to support rapid vehicle turnaround and to provide an improved understanding of the DC-XA's advanced structural components, including a composite liquid hydrogen tank, composite intertank, and aluminum-lithium liquid oxygen (LO2) tank. Development of the DC-XA SHMS required the selection and integration of fiberoptic and conventional sensors, development of an advanced, multi-channel fiberoptic sensor demodulator, investigation of sensor installation methods, and the development of structural health data analysis and visualization algorithms. This paper describes the design, implementation, and operation of the DC-XA SHMS. Results and conclusions from ground and flight tests are presented.
DC-XA structural health monitoring system
1997
12 Seiten, 3 Quellen
Conference paper
English
Wiley | 2011
|Springer Verlag | 2016
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