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Impact Source Localization on a Helicopter Tail Rotor Blade

F. CIAMPA, M. MEO

Abstract



This paper illustrates an in-situ Structural Health Monitoring System for the localization of the impact source on a helicopter composite tail rotor blade. This technique, based on the Inverse Filtering process, is applied to a number of waveforms recorded by a number of passive piezoelectric transducers containing the impulse response of the medium. Unlike other ultrasonic impact localization methods, the present technique allows obtaining the optimal focalization of the impact point by taking advantage of multiple linear scattering and a small number of receiver sensors. The impact localization results shows that the location of the impact point could be achieved with a high level of accuracy in any point of the structure as long as a high number of information from the signal spectrum was contained in the recorded waveforms.

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