SMIST - Structural Monitoring with advanced Integrated Sensor Technologies
Overview
Background & policy context:
The continued growth in air traffic has placed an increasing demand on the aerospace industry to manufacture aircraft at lower costs, while, at the same time, ensuring the products are efficient to operate, environmentally friendly and maintain the required level of safety. The primary objective of the aero-space industry is to offer products that not only meet the operational criteria, in terms of pay-loads and range, but also in terms of significantly reduced direct operating cost, which is to the benefit of their customers, the airlines.
Objectives:
The ultimate aim of the SMIST project was to develop and validate monitoring technologies able to deliver certain cost savings for maintenance and enable innovative structural design for metals and composites. For this purpose, the objective was to allow the most advanced sensing technologies to become an integral part of the aircraft structure and thus implement Structural health monitoring (SHM) into aircraft structural design in order to minimise maintenance costs, increase aircraft availability and minimise weight.
Methodology:
The project itself was split into three parts (Work Packages), dealing with:
- Work Package 1 - specifications;
- Work Package 2 - technology development, and;
- Work Package 3 - application and validation tests.
The project included nine sensor and monitoring technologies of different natures, which, at the end of the project, had to prove their applicability with regard to the objectives and specifications set. Due to their different natures, not all the technologies met all of the objectives and specifications. However, all the objectives were addressed and hopefully met by the different technologies involved. Providing different solutions to meeting the objectives guaranteed that the merging of different technologies into one system would still be possible in the end, and that lead to a system meeting all of the objectives being addressed. It was possible that none of the technologies presented were able to meet the objectives set at this stage.
The monitoring technologies to be proven were:
- Fibre Optic Bragg Gratings;
- Sensitive Coatings;
- Environmental Degradation Monitoring Sensors;
- ยต-wave Antennas;
- Acousto-Ultrasonics;
- Comparative Vacuum Measurement;
- Acoustic Emission;
- Imaging Ultrasonics;
- Eddy Current Foil Systems.
Share this page