Efficient Airframe Management Using In-Situ Structural Health Monitoring

Abstract

The United States Air Force utilizes the Aircraft Structural Integrity Program (ASIP) to service and maintain its airframes. This schedule-based maintenance approach works well for ensuring system integrity; however, it is very costly, labor-intensive and it reduces system availability. As a result, the Air Force intends to transition to a process that services aircraft based on their actual condition instead of the presumptive schedule-based approach. Structural health monitoring (SHM) technologies are being investigated to enable such real-time state awareness and decision-making. This paper provides a brief review of ASIP and the required inspections to investigate structural fatigue. The current ASIP process is demonstrated on a representative aircraft component which is fatigue loaded in the laboratory. A SHM system has been developed to estimate fatigue crack lengths in the representative component. The potential benefits of integrating advanced SHM techniques into the ASIP framework are highlighted.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 01, 2012
Accession Number
ADA570895

Entities

People

  • Mark M. Derriso
  • Martin P. Desimio
  • Matthew S. Leonard
  • Steven E. Olson

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Biomedical
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Availability
  • Department Of Defense
  • Fracture (Mechanics)
  • Inspection
  • Maintenance
  • Mechanics
  • Military Research
  • Monitoring
  • Spars
  • Structural Components
  • Structural Health Monitoring
  • Structural Integrity
  • Weapon Systems

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Structural Health Monitoring of Composite Structures.
  • Systems Analysis and Design