SPA, with the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland, proposes to investigate the feasibility of a wavelet-based constrained adaptive lifting (CAL) technique for health monitoring of aerospace structures. CAL has been used successfully for damage detection in planetary gear systems of rotorcraft main rotor transmission systems. The proposed effort will attempt to modify the previously developed methodologies to make them applicable to continuous structural members, which will require modifications from the methodology used for repeatable transmission vibration signatures. These modifications will include methods of incorporating multiple sensor responses and non-uniform load spectrums. Analytical development will be followed by in-laboratory experimental validation on undamaged and damaged cantilevered beams.
Benefits: Health monitoring of military and civilian aerospace structures offers the potential to save lives, increase aircraft availability, and reduce maintenance costs. Current non-destructive testing methods require significant time by highly trained maintenance personnel who must conduct the inspections. By eliminating these inspections, an in-situ health monitoring system will greatly reduce these maintenance times and costs. Because the technology does not require a model of the structure under investigation, it can be applied to a myriad of complex structures in all fields, not just aerospace vehicles.
Keywords: constrained, adaptive, lifting, wavelets, health monitoring, damage detection, aerospace, structural testing