STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING AND LIFE PROGNOSIS OF COMPOSITE STRUCTURES

Structural Health Monitoring/Management (SHM) through adequate prediction of the remaining useful life of structures is a major area of interest for the aerospace community, especially considering aging aircraft where the growing maintenance costs can reduce their economic life. Also, composite structures due to their high strength-to-weight ratios, high stiffness, inherent corrosion resistance, and improved fatigue performance offer many advantages over the conventional metallic materials, and therefore are utilized in a variety of load bearing structures such as helicopter rotor blades, aircraft fuselage, rib chord, trailing edges, and cargo doors. This makes the understanding and then improving durability of composite structures very critical. Recent aircraft structural failures caused by undetected faults have resulted in a change in philosophy in design and maintenance of aircraft from fatigue safe-life to damage tolerance….

Faculty Supervisor:

Afzal Suleman

Student:

Partner:

Harwood Custom Composites

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

University of Victoria

Program: