Fuse-like devices replacing linear sensors - working examples of percolation sensors in operational airliners and chemical installations

© 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, London. In order to detect diverse failure modes and damage sizes, sensors in traditional Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) for aircraft and other engineering structures usually work in a quasi-linear mode. Therefore, also when used in a Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system, their performance is limited by operation-dependent baseline variations as well as by signal interference in complicated structures. Further technologies are thus required such as elaborated data processing and high-end hardware components. These sophisticated countermeasures however hinder in turn the fast and efficient implementation of SHM. Our answer to this challenge is the use of sensor materials that operate like fuses, i.e. they start to be highly sensitive just when a pre-set degree of damage has been reached. In this way, baseline variations when no relevant damage is present are naturally suppressed. The physical principles for the detection applied are electrical conductivity, electrochemical impedance and optical transmission.

ISBN:978-1-138-02884-5

Jaar van publicatie:2016

Toegankelijkheid:Closed