Structural Health Monitoring Application on Chemical Mill Line Cracking

Abstract

The FAA’s Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) research program is integral in the FAA’s regulatory policy and guidance development for the implementation of SHM in civil aircraft. It also assists the FAA’s Emerging Technology Research program in numerous test scenarios. Various SHM technologies get real structure testing and provide the FAA with inspection results. Further, the SHM research team also participates in the SAE Aerospace Industry Steering Committee (AISC) for SHM. This paper will provide a brief history of the SHM research program and its assistance in FAA certification of SHM use. It will provide results from one of the Emerging Technology test programs at the FAA William J Hughes Technical Center focused on the evaluation of two SHM technologies and their ability to detect chemical mill line cracking on a full-scale test panel.