Structural sensor testing for space vehicle applications

Abstract

The Boeing Company is funded by Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to perform research and development activities on Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Assessment Techniques for Advanced Aerospace Vehicles. This effort includes two SHM aspects, i.e., on-board sensors and ground based NDE techniques. The first aspect focuses on prototyping a SHM system that integrates several different types of sensors to generate structural health information based on real-time or near real-time sensor data. The second aspect focuses on a ground system that provides a linkage between the on-board sensors and ground based NDE techniques with a prototype system capable of rapidly gathering and interpreting structural health information. They can be viewed as two parts of a SHM system that are complimentary to one another. Developing such an SHM system is intended to help advance aerospace vehicle's safety and reliability, satisfy the required turnaround time, reduce cost and cycle time in design, operation and maintenance. The primary vehicle platform considered for this program is the Space Operation Vehicle (SOV)1, a future high speed vehicle. The baseline vehicle description will be used to determine system requirements for a SHM/NDE system and to evaluate candidate technologies throughout the technology down select process. This paper will discuss an evaluation test in which candidate sensors and NDE methods are applied to space structure components tested at a simulated flight load environment.© (2005) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.