Hot-Spot Fatigue and Impact Damage Detection on a Helicopter Tailboom

摘要

Monitoring the health of aircraft components and identifying problems before theycan affect airworthiness has been a long-term goal in aviation. Current maintenanceprocedures are performed on a conservative, calendar or usage-based schedule ratherthan condition-based. These scheduled maintenance practices are time-consuming,labor-intensive and expensive. Furthermore, as structures age, maintenance servicefrequency (often unscheduled) and costs increase while performance and availabilitydecrease. A promising solution to these issues is the application and integration ofCondition Based Maintenance (CBM) and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM)technologies and processes.To enable more efficient and effective airframe maintenance, fatigue cracking andimpact damage detection technologies were developed and demonstrated on acommercial tailboom. This paper discusses the application of SMART Layertechnology to detect damage caused by cyclic loads and ballistic impact on thetailboom. The damage locations and sizes were compared with the computed valuesfrom the SHM system.