ACELLENT TECHNOLOGIES INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: Advanced composite materials, increasingly adopted for airframe structures, are susceptibl

Description

Advanced composite materials, increasingly adopted for airframe structures, are susceptible to barely visible impact damage, which has the potential to lead to a catastrophic failure if not accurately monitored. Structural health monitoring (SHM) based on acousto-ultrasound method has emerged as a promising technique for monitoring the onset and progress of structural damage. Acousto-ultrasound based SHM system employs generation and propagation of stress waves through attached piezoelectric transducers giving necessary information for monitoring the health of the structure. However, these techniques are generally suitable for simple structures without any local property /thickness variations. In this SBIR program, Acellent proposes to develop an innovative model-assisted SHM system that is capable of detecting, locating and characterizing type of damage on composite rotocraft structures. The proposed system learns sensitive signal features through a physics based wave propagation simulations and utilizes the knowledge to optimize sensor network for the given structure, and integrates offline learning with the current sensor data to accurately locate the damage even for complex structure with local property/thickness variation. Prototypes of the proposed model-assisted SHM system will be developed and demonstrated under representative loading and environmental conditions. Functionality of the proposed system will be tested thouroughly for different damage types.