Abstract
A key longstanding objective of the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) research community is to enable the embedment of SHM systems in high value assets like aircraft to provide on-demand damage detection and evaluation. As against traditional non-destructive inspection hardware, embedded SHM systems must be compact, lightweight, low-power and sufficiently robust to survive exposure to severe in-flight operating conditions. Typical Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) systems can be bulky, costly and are often inflexible in their configuration and/or scalability, which militates against in-service deployment. Advances in electronics have resulted in ever smaller, cheaper and more reliable components that facilitate the development of compact and robust embedded SHM systems, including for Acousto-Ultrasonics (AU), a guided plate-wave inspection modality that has attracted strong interest due mainly to its capacity to furnish wide-area diagnostic coverage with a relatively low sensor density. This article provides a detailed description of the development, testing and demonstration of a new AU interrogation system called the Acousto Ultrasonic Structural health monitoring Array Module+ (AUSAM+). This system provides independent actuation and sensing on four Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensor (PWAS) elements with further sensing on four Positive Intrinsic Negative (PIN) photodiodes for intensity-based interrogation of Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG). The paper details the development of a novel piezoelectric excitation amplifier, which, in conjunction with flexible acquisition-system architecture, seamlessly provides electromechanical impedance spectroscopy for PWAS diagnostics over the full instrument bandwidth of 50 KHz–5 MHz. The AUSAM+ functionality is accessed via a simple hardware object providing a myriad of custom software interfaces that can be adapted to suit the specific requirements of each individual application.
Highlights
Embedded structural health monitoring (SHM) systems offer the prospect of enabling inspection for structural damage on-demand
This paper reports on the development of a light-weight, robust, compact, portable and inexpensive device for AU excitation and interrogation called the Acousto Ultrasonic Structural health monitoring Array Module+ (AUSAM+ )
Further work is planned to assess the performance of the AUSAM+ under more moderate levels of impact damage
Summary
Embedded structural health monitoring (SHM) systems offer the prospect of enabling inspection for structural damage on-demand. This paper reports on the development of a light-weight, robust, compact, portable and inexpensive device for AU excitation and interrogation called the Acousto Ultrasonic Structural health monitoring Array Module+ (AUSAM+ ). The module caters for fiber optic sensing of acoustic waves with four intensity-based Positive Intrinsic Negative (PIN) photodiodes, and can acquire temperature and strain measurements. The development of both a Matlab and Python hardware object enables straightforward access to the full functionality of the device in both languages and thereby provides enormous flexibility for the creation of custom interfaces. The efficacy of the system is demonstrated through the results of first-of-class testing, as well as multiple laboratory AU studies on aerospace related metallic and composite structures using an array of PWAS elements and FBG sensors
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
