Development and Evaluation of Sensor Concepts for Ageless Aerospace Vehicles: Threats and Measurands

摘要

The ultimate goal of ageless aerospace vehicles requires the development of materials and structures that are capable of self-assessment and repair. The aim of this project is to develop and examine concepts for intelligent integrated sensing, processing, communication and decision-making systems that could perform the distributed health monitoring functions of a smart vehicle. The purpose of this report is to present a list of the types of threats to which an aerospace vehicle is subject, general strategies for detecting them and/or their consequences, and to identify the quantities that must be measured for implementation of these strategies. Thus, this report establishes in broad terms the requirements that must be satisfied by an integrated vehicle health monitoring system. A number of significant issues are raised and discussed, including the wide range of requirements for the sensing and response system (the quantities that must be measured, and temporal and spatial measurement and response scales), the use of embedded and movable sensors, the need to distinguish structural damage from sensor or system failure, issues of information loss and sensor and system reliability, and the need to adopt an integrated approach to the solution of sensing, processing, communication and decision-making design problems. Whatever the capabilities of future materials for self-repair or regeneration, it is concluded that there will be a need for an integrated vehicle health monitoring system.