A novel photoelectric system for optical intelligent structure health monitoring

Abstract

This paper presents details of a novel photoelectric system for intelligent structural health monitoring in aircrafts. Through light intensity-based experiments about loads and damages of an aircraft composite structure conducted in this paper, the potential for structural health monitoring of the composite material is discussed. Firstly, the paper demonstrates the design of a novel photoelectric system including an optical part and a circuit part. The former part consists of a light resource group and fiber optical sensors. And the latter part of this system is composed of a monitoring host and a computer, both of which work together under the instructions given by self-designed software. The schematic hardware diagram and the flow chart of the main program of the software are specified in this paper. In order to assess the monitoring effect, the loads experiments are carried out at different locations of a test object in which special optical fibers are buried. Finally, the degrees of loads and damages are measured and the experimental results are discussed. Results obtained offer feasibilities of employing the proposed photoelectric system as a monitoring device for load and damage detection in intelligent composite structures.