Workshop on transitioning structural health monitoring technology to military platforms

Abstract

Interest in structural health monitoring/management is attracting lots of attention across a spectrum that ranges from sensor developers to end users. The US military, in particular, is making a concerted effort to implement condition-based maintenance as a means of reducing the life cycle costs and improving availability of various weapon platforms. Despite this effort, the majority of installed health monitoring systems are limited to rotating machinery such as engines, transmissions, and other gear boxes. The goal of this workshop was to bring together representatives from military, industry, and academia covering the spectrum from hardware developers to end users and platform managers and have them discuss issues that must be addressed as structural health monitoring systems mature to the point that managers will implement them. This article describes those discussions and highlights important issues that need to be addressed as structural health monitoring systems make the transition from laboratory scale demonstrations to real-world use.