<title>Structural health management for aging aircraft</title>

Abstract

An effective structural health management (SHM) system can be a useful tool for making aircraft fleet management decisions ranging from individual aircraft maintenance scheduling and usage restrictions to fleet rotation strategies. This paper discusses the end-user requirements for the elements and architecture of an effective SHM system for application to both military and commercial aging aircraft fleets. The elements discussed include the sensor systems for monitoring and characterizing the health of the structure, data processing methods for interpreting sensor data and converting it into useable information, and automated methods for erroneous data detection, data archiving and information dissemination. Current and past SHM technology development/maturation efforts in these areas at the Boeing Company will be described. An evolutionary technology development strategy is developed in which the technologies needed will be matured, integrated into a vehicle health management system, and benefits established without requiring extensive changes to the end-user's existing operation and maintenance infrastructure. Issues regarding the end-user customer acceptance of SHM systems are discussed and summarized.

Embedded Ultrasonic NDE with Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors

“…Historically, acoustic emission signals have been captured with special-purpose acoustic emission sensors (e.g., Ikegami and Haugse, 2001;Mal, 2001;Dzenis and Qian, 2001), which are costly and obtrusive. Blanas et al (1997) andDupont et al (2000) studied the possibility of using embedded piezoelectric wafer sensors to detect acoustic emission signals in composite materials.…”

Damage Identification in Aging Aircraft Structures with Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors

“…Historically, acoustic emission signals have been captured with special-purpose acoustic emission sensors (e.g., Dzenis and Qian, 2001;Ikegami and Haugse, 2001;Mal, 2001), which are costly and obtrusive. Blanas et al (1997) and Dupont et al (2000) studied the possibility of using embedded piezoelectric wafer sensors to detect acoustic emission signals in composite materials.…”