Health and usage monitoring of Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology unmanned air vehicles

Structural health and usage monitoring of unmanned air vehicles is of increasing interest not only for the evaluation of flight loads and the use of data in order to estimate the remaining lifetime of the structure but also for a fast and reliable assessment of structural impacts due to unexpected events that can produce significant loads on the structure, such as hard landings and gusts. This is especially important with composite material structures where damage is quite often barely visible. In-flight load and usage monitoring enables fast turnaround times and increases the availability of the unmanned air vehicle. The Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology has been developing, for over two decades now, unmanned air vehicles for surveillance, reconnaissance, and aerial targets. At the moment, a health and usage monitoring system for the Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology’s medium altitude and long endurance unmanned air vehicle called MILANO, based on fiber Bragg grating s...