Evaluation of Long-term Flight Data from On-board SMART Layers

One of the major challenges in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques for aerospace applications is sensor survivability in actual flight conditions for certification. Data are needed to demonstrate that SHM sensors can sustain and survive harsh aerospace flight environments for a long period of time. This paper presents the results of a 72 month (6-year) study of sensor data from Acellent’s SMART layers that were permanently mounted onto a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter at NASA Ames in California. The study was conducted under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), the Aviation Development Directorate - Aeroflightdynamics Directorate (ADD-AFDD) located at NASA Ames and Acellent Technologies to enhance, validate, and demonstrate the SHM technique and system that can potentially be used to enable condition-based maintenance (CBM) of aircraft structures. A UH-60L Blackhawk rotorcraft installed with SMART Layer piezoelectric actuators and sensors has been flying under the CRADA research program since 2009. The sensors have been subjected to various operational conditions such as loading, vibration, thermal cycling during flight and, heavy dust conditions at the Yuma Proving Ground. Selected results are presented in this paper (additional information is available in ref [1]). doi: 10.12783/SHM2015/335