Hybrid State-Detection System for Gearbox Components Navy STTR FY2012.A Sol No.: Navy STTR FY2012.A Topic No.: N12A-T007 Topic Title: Hybrid State-Detection System for Gearbox Components Proposal No.: N12A-007-0135 Firm: Metis Design Corporation 205 Portland St 4th Floor Boston, Massachusetts 02114 Contact: Seth Kessler Phone: (617) 447-2172 Web Site: www.MetisDesign.com Abstract: Aerospace structures are subject to dynamic loading. In particular, gearbox components experience continuous cyclic loading, wear and eventually develop fatigue cracks. As opposed to most other aircraft components, gearbox components are non-redundant, so a failure can have catastrophic consequences. Gearbox members are typically magnesium, aluminum or high-strength steel that exhibit high fracture toughness, but are brittle, making them susceptible to fatigue failure. Gearbox safety can be ensured via real-time detection methods. Current monitoring systems fail to detect damage in at early enough stage to provide sufficient warning before failure, or may cause false positives. Accurate diagnosis and prognosis of gearbox health state can reduce maintenance schedules, and component life may be extended, which lead to significant life-cycle cost reduction. This proposal focuses on the development of a gearbox PHM system for early detection of cracking. The system will be hybrid in nature, relying on both passive acquisition of elastic waves in operation, as well as active excitation of guided waves while on the ground. Both techniques will make use of model-augmented pattern recognition techniques to characterize an accurate real-time state of health for the gearbox. Metis Design Corporation (MDC) will work closely with collaborator University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Benefits: Once successfully demonstrated through a Phase II effort, there exists a broad commercial market for this product. One of the key success factors for this technology is its versatility; the ability not only to be integrated into new applications, but also to be retrofitted into an existing system. Military aircrafts are in desperate need of this technology to monitor ageing platforms, to reduce the number and time of required inspections, which would also give them the more operational time. The obvious market beyond military rotorcraft would be other commercial rotorcraft. Once the proposed SHM technologies have been proven in aerospace applications and have been around long enough to reduce their cost of implementation, systems such as these will likely be utilized in other naval and civil/utility applications soon thereafter such as wind-turbines. Return