An industrial perspective on the development of three novel aircraft maintenance NDT methods

Since the beginning of aviation, the innovation in technologies and operational procedures have steadily increased comfort, performance and safety of air transport. Especially the latter aspect leads to a continuously decreasing number of fatal accidents despite the steadily increasing number of aeroplanes. In this context, new and more advanced inspection methods for continuous, in-line and repetitive monitoring play a key role. However, the complexity of underlying new technologies must not increase elaborate procedures and maintenance tasks. To bridge the complexity of new technologies and its easy and fruitful application during the daily maintenance of aircraft, close cooperation between the industry as the final user and developing institutes in academia are desirable. This presentation examines the collaborative development of three novel aircraft maintenance tools from an industrial point of view. The following concepts, their application and implementation in the daily aircraft maintenance are put into place by means of the close collaboration between Brussels Airlines and the KU Leuven. A retrofit with embedded percolation threshold sensors enables detecting water ingress in the aircraft structure and allows the prediction of hot spots with a high risk of corrosion at an early stage [1]. Acoustic emission measurements enable the detection of melting ice and can potentially increase the efficiency and safety of daily aircraft maintenance [2]. A portable camera system and the usage of digital image correlation allows the fast, digital and remote assessment of impact damages [3]. The research leading to these results has received funding from the “NDTonAIR” project (Training Network in Non-Destructive Testing and Structural Health Monitoring of Aircraft structures) under the action: H2020-MSCA-ITN-2016-GRANT 722134 and from the AISHA II Project (Aircraft Integrated Structural Health Assessment II)under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme [FP7/2007-2013] under the grant agreement no. 212912