SMART TECHNOLOGIES FOR STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING OF AEROSPACE STRUCTURES

This paper presents recent advances in the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) project within the Consortium for Research and Innovation in Aerospace in Québec (CRIAQ). This project aims at developing technologies and a SHM system for potentially reducing the high costs associated with periodic prescribed inspections of aircraft structures and components. This paper presents an overview of models and strategies developed within this project. Modeling tools describing the dynamic behavior of structures and simulating the effect of defects on modal parameters in low frequency range are first presented. To increase the spatial resolution to defects localization, response in the medium frequency range is investigated and modeling tools are developed and validated for this range. A number of damage detection strategies are proposed and experimentally validated. Strategies based on non-linear response of structures have demonstrated their potential for breathing-like defects detection. Strategies based on differential measurements using piezoelectric elements have demonstrated high sensitivity while requiring dense meshing. Other localized damag