Health Monitoring of TPS Structures by Measuring Their Electrical Resistance

Abstract

Health Monitoring in aerospace applications becomes an emerging technology leading to the development of systems capable of continuously monitoring structures for damage with minimal human intervention. A promising sensing method to be applied on hot structures and thermal protection systems is the electrical resistance measurement technique, which is barely investigated up to now. This method benefits from the advantageous characteristics of self-monitoring materials, such as carbon fiber-reinforced materials. By measuring the variation of the electrical resistance of these materials information on possibly present mechanical damage can be derived. In order to set up a database on electric properties of relevant materials under relevant conditions and to perform a proof-of-concept for this health monitoring method a facility has been laid out, which allows for the measurement of the electrical resistance of thermal protection system relevant materials at temperatures up to 2000°C. First preliminary measurements of the surface resistance of a graphite sample have been performed and are presented. It has been proven necessary to make some modifications to the setup. Therefore, the remaining measurements with graphite and C/C-SiC samples are subject of further investigation which will be performed in the future.