Smart Skins for Structural Health Monitoring in Aerospace Applications

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The onset of printed electronics along with the shift to the predictive maintenance in aerospace applications present an interesting opportunity for embedding health monitoring sensors and their independent power sources into the skin of the aircraft structure. Future aircraft will rely on a complex network of onboard sensors utilized to monitor its structural condition and indicate possible faults before they become intolerable. This paper assesses the prospects of embedding modern energy harvesting systems together with sensor layers into the composite smart skins placed on the aircraft panels, where a source of ambient energy for harvesting is available. This combination will create self-sufficient sensor nodes usable for efficient structural health monitoring of the aircraft. One of the easily achievable sources of ambient energy are vibrations of the panels during the flight. A piezoelectric harvester is considered to transduce these mechanical vibrations both into useful electric power and into the monitoring signal. Use of materials with piezoelectric properties is investigated and their system implementation is outlined.

The onset of printed electronics along with the shift to the predictive maintenance in aerospace applications present an interesting opportunity for embedding health monitoring sensors and their independent power sources into the skin of the aircraft structure. Future aircraft will rely on a complex network of onboard sensors utilized to monitor its structural condition and indicate possible faults before they become intolerable. This paper assesses the prospects of embedding modern energy harvesting systems together with sensor layers into the composite smart skins placed on the aircraft panels, where a source of ambient energy for harvesting is available. This combination will create self-sufficient sensor nodes usable for efficient structural health monitoring of the aircraft. One of the easily achievable sources of ambient energy are vibrations of the panels during the flight. A piezoelectric harvester is considered to transduce these mechanical vibrations both into useful electric power and into the monitoring signal. Use of materials with piezoelectric properties is investigated and their system implementation is outlined.

structural health monitoring, smart skin, energy harvesting, predictive maintenance

26.09.2017

European Aeronautics Science Network

2523-5052

Proceedings of the EASN Association Conference - 7th EASN International Conference

59–65

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