Guided Wave-Based Bondline Integrity Monitoring Navy SBIR FY2012.2 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2012.2 Topic No.: N122-125 Topic Title: Guided Wave-Based Bondline Integrity Monitoring Proposal No.: N122-125-0537 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: The implementation of structural health monitoring (SHM) into aerospace applications has been hindered by component quantity, including sensors, cables, and acquisition/computation units, as well as data quality. Particularly for large-area applications such ship hulls, complexity of the implied system infrastructure can be impractical, and data effected by attenuation and EMI-pickup along analog cables. The payoff of reliable SHM would be the ability to detect/characterize in-situ damage for condition-based maintenance, thereby greatly reducing overall life-cycle costs. Metis Design Corporation (MDC) has demonstrated point-of-measurement datalogging and digital sensor-busing during prior Phase II SBIRs, which minimizes SHM infrastructure and EMI susceptibility. During the proposed SBIR, MDC will further exploit this low-mass, long-range, scalable SHM architecture to satisfy Navy requirements for damage detection and characterization for bonded composite joints. Since the MDC SHM hardware is already quite mature, much of the Phase I effort will aim to customize piezoelectric sensors and diagnostic algorithms to best meet Navy requirements. MDC will evaluate the effectiveness of various types and configurations of piezo-sensor materials, perform sensor placement optimization, and develop customized algorithms for this guided wave based system. Finally, MDC will collaborate with Northrop Grumman to demonstrate the selected configuration using platform-relevant materials, and assess the performance. Benefits: Once successfully demonstrated through a Phase II effort, there exists a broad commercial market for this SHM system. One of the key success factors for this technology is its versatility; the ability not only to be integrated into new applications, but to be retrofitted into an existing asset designs. The first obvious markets outside of UAVs would be other commercial and military aerospace applications. Beyond traditional airframes there exists a broad commercial market for SHM. MDC has had prior work with the NRO, who would use this technology for DoD ELV's. Military aircraft are in desperate need of this technology to monitor ageing platforms, and airlines that chose to use these systems would be able to reduce the number and time of required inspections, which would also give them the opportunity cost to capture profit due to more up-time. Once SHM technologies have been proven in naval & aerospace applications and have been around long enough to reduce their cost of implementation, systems such as these will likely be utilized in many automotive and civil applications soon thereafter. Return