Development and Validation of Acoustic Emission Structural Health Monitoring for Aerospace Structures

Abstract

Acoustic Emission (AE) method has been shown to be able to detect damage growth in metals and composites. Verification and validation are necessary in order to enable the management of the risk of operation of engineered structures that are being monitored. This presentation consists of two main sections: first an experimental study of AE hardware and algorithms to detect and classify damage in a complex shaped carbon fiber reinforced polymer composite (CFRP) structure. Second, we discuss what a validation program should contain to satisfy regulatory authorities that this health monitoring approach can be used as a nondestructive testing technique, with associated probability of detection (POD) estimation.