Development of the Aircraft Structural Health Monitoring Equipment integrating Optical Sensor and Analog Sensor

Abstract

The structure of the aircraft has made lots of effort to secure the safety, and the safety is remarkably secured through the lifetime management and the non-destructive inspection. However, periodic inspection requires much time and expense, and various monitoring techniques for aircraft structures are required, especially when the SHM technique is studied for composite structures that cannot use traditional lifetime management techniques. For performing this monitoring, the predeveloped analog sensor has a limit in durability and cable weight. Therefore, the demand for the monitoring equipment of the new technique has been increasing, and FBG and PZT sensor are used representatively. In this paper, we have developed a device that can acquire analog sensor (Accelerometer and Strain gage) and FBG sensor, and support interworking with the Air Data Bus (MIL-STD-1553B, Ethernet) for real-time analysis. Also, it satisfies various military environmental requirements for use in military aircraft. The equipment which is introduced in this paper is expected to be used for SHM and lifetime management.