Airbus Strategy and Use Case for Airframe Structural Health Monitoring of Aeronautical Structures Dedicated to Damage Detection Assessment and Damage Monitoring

Airbus is engaged in the development of Structural Health Monitoring solutions to reduce maintenance costs. SHM solutions for damage detection are particularly under investigation as alternatives to “classical” NDT tasks, to alleviate the maintenance burden. These damage detection systems are intended to be installed on the aircraft and interrogated at dedicated checks in the life of the aircraft. Such configurations can be seen as an “NDT-in-situ” SHM approach, where the NDT Probe is permanently installed. In the case presented here, a damage detection and monitoring performance demonstration shall be performed to ensure the detection performances and measurement accuracy of the SHM solution along the life of the aircraft, thus including the effects of environmental and mechanical ageing. The Probability of Detection study applied to SHM solutions dedicated to damage detection will be detailed including the method for identification of all variables which could influence the detection sensitivity. The function describing the crack length measurement accuracy beyond detection capability is introduced. In this presentation the performance demonstration approach developed at Airbus will be presented, as well as results obtained on a specific use case. The first part of the presentation will show the qualification process developed for this purpose, including how the effects of sensor aging are considered with respect to probability of detection and accuracy of measurement. In the second part of the presentation, one use case application will be presented. It will be explained how SHM sensors are expected to replace classical NDT tasks and to avoid heavy maintenance operations for accessing the area to be inspected with classical NDT methods. Finally, the last part will focus on the value of embedded SHM sensors on aeronautical structures: the damage monitoring. The requirements associated with this use case will be detailed and Airbus methodology for demonstrating its capabilities through the test plan.