Sikorsky airframe collaboration with suppliers and military customers has been evolving over the past 20 years to continually decrease the cycle time for design development including customer concurrent oversight and airworthiness certification (“Information Week - Communication Aids Design”, Reference 1). Future Vertical Lift (FVL) aircraft rapid development schedules including the Raider-X® Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) Competitive Prototype (CP) fly-off and subsequent production design have mandated the need for concurrency in contractor / customer awareness of design details. To address this need, Sikorsky has developed a uniquely collaborative system to share structural analysis applications, structural models and substantiating data as it emerges real-time in development from multiple sources with customer oversight to assure consistency and accuracy to satisfy requirements for rapid certification.
Advancements in Damage Tolerant Airframe Structures in combination with Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) have created an opportunity to exploit the synergies in these technologies to change the paradigm for Airframe Life Management for future Aircraft. In the last decade or more, Sikorsky has validated multiple production helicopter Airframes using Damage and Flaw Tolerant certification requirements. The experience of the authors of this paper contributed to the recent joint services and industry development of the Rotorcraft Structural Integrity Program (RSIP as specified in MIL-STD-3063) for design of future military rotorcraft. In addition, Sikorsky has also developed a range of technologies relevant to SHM to reduce over-inspection and maintenance to drive increased operational availability. Combined, these developments will allow new Airframe designs to meet the US Army's new requirements for Maintenance Free Operational Periods (MFOP), for example 200 flight hours for the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) rotorcraft.
The Autonomous Sustainment Technologies for Rotorcraft Operations-Structures (ASTRO-S) project between U. S. Army Combat Capability Missile Center, Aviation Development Directorate-Eustis (FCDD-AMV-E) and Sikorsky developed and validated a range of technologies to enable reduced airframe maintenance burden, increase operational availability, and provide key enabling technologies relative to Army's transition to the new paradigm of Maintenance Free Operational Periods (MFOP) for the rotorcraft of the future. Methods were developed for autonomous characterization of major damage and residual strength expressed as a Structural Health Index (SHI) for advanced durable and damage tolerant composite aerospace structural assemblies with redundant load paths, enabling targeted inspections and strength-based fly / watch / repair decisions. A number of sensing technologies including fiber-optic strain measurement and piezo-based structural health assessment, along with a number of innovative advanced algorithms that intelligently use changes in monitored structural responses, were implemented in a comprehensive architecture to detect, localize, and assess the severity of structural damage. Extensive testing on full-scale, multiload-path composite structures to assess feasibility and effectiveness of the developed technologies, as well as understand application and transition challenges, has convincingly shown that damage detection, localization, and severity assessment in an autonomous fashion is feasible. Further, it was shown that the concept of a trendable SHI to assess residual strength, is viable, although additional full-scale test cases are needed to further validate and mature the approach. Overall, these key findings affirm suitability of the technical approach and associated algorithms for reducing maintenance burden by triggering rather than scheduling inspections and potentially deferring repairs in high op-tempo environments. These structural health management technologies will be key enablers supporting Army's future rotorcraft when operating in an untethered multi-domain battle space.
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