Active health monitoring of an aircraft wing with embedded piezoelectric sensor/actuator network: I. Defect detection, localization and growth monitoring

Abstract

This work focuses on an ultrasonic guided wave structural health monitoring (SHM) system development for aircraft wing inspection. In part I of the study, a detailed description of a real aluminum wing specimen and some preliminary wave propagation tests on the wing panel are presented. Unfortunately, strong attenuation and scattering impede guided waves for large-area inspection. Nevertheless, small, low-cost and light-weight piezoelectric (PZT) discs were bonded to various parts of the aircraft wing, in a form of relatively sparse arrays, for simulated cracks and corrosion monitoring. The PZT discs take turns generating and receiving ultrasonic guided waves. Pair-wise through-transmission waveforms collected at normal conditions served as baselines, and subsequent signals collected at defected conditions such as rivet cracks or corrosion detected the presence of a defect and its location with a novel correlation analysis based technique called RAPID (reconstruction algorithm for probabilistic inspection of defects). The effectiveness of the algorithm was tested with several case studies in a laboratory environment. It showed good performance for defect detection, size estimation and localization in complex aircraft wing structures.

Damage Detectability Model of Pitch-Catch Configuration in Composite Plates

“…The interaction between a BVID and lamb wave is very complicated due to the complexity of BVID. Existing studies of damage detection with pitch-catch configuration in CFRP plates has shown that a transducer pair whose direct path is close to a damage is more likely to be detected than those further away from a damage [1][2][3][4]. A previous study [11] has identified this feature as reflection angle , which is the angle between incident wave direction and reflected wave direction at a point.…”

“…One of the most commonly used transducer configuration is pitch-catch where transducers are sparsely spaced on the structure and signals are interrogated with a round robin approach [1][2][3][4]. Zhao et al [1] proposed an algorithm for probabilistic inspection of defects (RAPID) which sums a signal difference coefficient of pristine state signal and damage state signal in an elliptic pattern.…”

“…Zhao et al [1] proposed an algorithm for probabilistic inspection of defects (RAPID) which sums a signal difference coefficient of pristine state signal and damage state signal in an elliptic pattern. A loose rivet, cracks and simulated corrosion defects were detected and located in an aluminum aircraft wing structure.…”

Damage Sensing in Blades

“…The use of this technique on its own is quite limited since only the path between transmitter and receiver is inspected. Thus, a network of transducers covering the structure has been performed by many researchers (Zhao et al 2007;Lissenden and Rose 2008;Ng and Veidt 2009) in order to interrogate in a pitch-catch configuration the entire structure. With this technique, the system is able to map the inspected area by analysing all the paths between transducers.…”

Enhanced Piezoelectric Behavior of PVDF Nanocomposite by AC Dielectrophoresis Alignment of ZnO Nanowires

“…Lead zirconate titanate (PZT), which is a typical piezoelectric material, is widely used in the aviation [1,2], automobile [3,4], and precision machinery [5] industries due to its excellent performance capabilities. However, while there have been various studies of lead-free piezoelectric materials, leadbased materials have adverse effects on the environment and on human health [6].…”