LUNA INNOVATIONS INCORPORATED — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A20-113

Description

Contemporary air vehicles have become tremendously sophisticated systems which require precise optimization in order to achieve the maximum potential of which they are capable.  This holds true for platforms ranging from helicopters to UAVs.  The days of operating and maintaining an aircraft using no more than a handful of gauges is past, and the effective utilization and maintenance of modern air vehicles mandates the collection of a massive number of data points, including temperatures, pressures, strain measurements, vibration monitoring, accelerometers, and acoustic emission data.  Previously, each type of measurement has required its own, unique sensor and data acquisition hardware, adding to the complexity and cost of an air vehicle, and creating numerous potential points of failure, and significant weight in the wiring to support the measurements.  Luna proposes to supplant the old paradigm of aircraft monitoring with the realization of a health, usage, and monitoring system (HUMS) built around the proven Hyperion® platform of fiber optic sensor interrogators.  The Hyperion is a versatile multi-channel sensing platform, compatible with a variety of sensor types, and able to simultaneously monitor up to 1024 sensors at 5kHz.  In this proposed effort, Luna will adapt and mature the Hyperion interrogator for aviation usage by extending and qualifying its performance over the needed operational envelope, enhancing the quantity of simultaneous sensors that can be addressed, and advancing it towards a flight qualified system.