Strain monitoring of a composite wing

An instrumented composite wing is described. The wing is designed to meet the load and ruggedness requirements for a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in search-and-rescue applications. The UAV supports educational systems development and has a 2.1-m wingspan. The wing structure consists of a foam core covered by a carbon-fiber, laminate composite shell. To quantify the wing characteristics, a fiber-optic strain sensor was surface mounted to measure distributed strain. This sensor is based on Rayleigh scattering from local index variations and it is capable of high spatial resolution. The use of the Rayleigh-scattering fiber-optic sensors for distributed measurements is discussed.