SBIR-STTR Award

There is a need for a condition based management system to continuously monitor aging and new naval systems. A fiber optic (FO) system is uniquely positioned to provide accurate, non-invasive, and continuous real-time assessment of parameters such as temperature, load, vibration, impact events, and acoustic emissions. In addition, new power-over-fiber methods have been identified to generate controlled ultrasonic wave pulses for active sensing of damage such as corrosion, cracks, or coating bond condition, which will be used to probe hot spot areas for additional information. Guidedwave (FBS, Inc. d.b.a. Guidedwave ) proposes a FO network of embedded fiber Bragg grating sensors and ultrasound generation nodes to simultaneously collect this multi-parameter data in real-time. Many sensors will be multiplexed onto each fiber, and all fibers will be routed to a central hub where optical equipment (e.g., lasers, controllers) and data acquisition hardware will be held. A computer with custom monitoring software will be used to control, view, integrate, and analyze the data. This data will be integrated with other platform data streams for use in decision making regarding topics such as system readiness, real-time operational situational awareness, and maintenance planning, and will provide an overall cost savings to the Navy.

Benefit:
As a result of the proposed work, a FO system for condition based management will be developed for continuous, real-time assessment of temperature, load, vibration, impact events, and acoustic emissions. This system would have tremendous commercial and government market potential. The system will first be applied to and demonstrated on Naval structures on fleet vessels and aircraft, and can be applied to structures such as ship hulls, fuel or ballast tanks, pipe, decks and platforms, aircraft skin, and others. However, the FO system can readily be transitioned onto commercial vessels and aircraft, as well as other complex engineering structures such as power plants (including nuclear facilities), rotating and hydraulic machinery systems, and infrastructure projects such as bridges, tunnels, and others. This will lead to cost savings through improved maintenance planning and avoidance of catastrophic failures. FO systems are already in use to sense individual parameters such as strain or temperature. However, the ability to sense many parameters simultaneously with a single FO network system represents a breakthrough.

Keywords:
condition based management (CBM), condition based management (CBM), Fiber optic network, Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG), Fiber optic sensors, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), Ultrasound Generation, Acoustic Emission