Abstract
The work reported on this paper describes a new methodology implementation for active structural health monitoring of recent aircraft parts made from carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer. This diagnosis is based on a new embedded method that is capable of measuring the local high frequency impedance spectrum of the structure through the calculation of the electro-mechanical impedance of a piezoelectric patch pasted non-permanently onto its surface. This paper involves both the laboratory based E/M impedance method development, its implementation into a CPU with limited resources as well as a comparison with experimental testing data needed to demonstrate the feasibility of flaw detection on composite materials and answer the question of the method reliability. The different development steps are presented and the integration issues are discussed. Furthermore, we present the unique advantages that the reconfigurable electronics through System-on-Chip (SoC) technology brings to the system scaling and flexibility. At the end of this article, we demonstrate the capability of a basic network of sensors mounted onto a real composite aircraft part specimen to capture its local impedance spectrum signature and to diagnosis different delamination sizes using a comparison with a baseline.
Highlights
The constant integration of composite materials into aircraft structures [1] makes maintenance and flaw detection more crucial than ever before for safety reasons and failure prognostics
In order to monitor these kinds of structures, we have implemented a promising technique called electromechanical impedance measurement into a real-time reconfigurable electronics platform [4]
The electromechanical (E/M) impedance method is an emerging and powerful technique that is based on the measurement of the complex impedance ZPZT of a piezoelectric patch pasted onto a host structure to detect mechanical flaws
Summary
The constant integration of composite materials into aircraft structures [1] makes maintenance and flaw detection more crucial than ever before for safety reasons and failure prognostics. Composite structures show after energetic impacts delamination defects without any external visible signs [2], which makes the traditional visual inspection method totally inappropriate. By analyzing the electromechanical impedance of the PZTs we are able to measure the high-frequency local impedance spectrum of the structure, which is highly sensitive to incipient damage [5]. By comparing this measure to a baseline value we are capable to detect any delamination and disbond flaws
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