THE IMPACT OF MONITORING ON EXTENDING AIRCRAFT OPERATIONAL LIFE

摘要

This paper deals specifically with current methods of aircraft fatigue life design, actual considerations regarding extension of aircraft operational life and possible options for damage monitoring technology to be built into aircraft structural components. Much emphasis is laid on the future of such technologies such as using fibre optic and piezoelectric sensors combined with advanced signal processing such as neural networks, wavelet transforms or novelty detection. Emerging technologies such as smart damage monitoring layers or remote sensing is also discussed. A validation procedure for these different technologies is described. Quantitative data for validating the benefits of monitoring is given as far as possible.