SHM Supporting Damage Tolerance Design Philosophy as A Challenge for Designers of Future Airframes

Abstract

Development design pfilosophy of airframes in all the relevant technological fields is important for the evaluation of high performance airframes best to achive high level of safety and satisfy the market needs. Maintenance cost reduction, increased aircraft availability and weight saving are goals which will be reaching by SHM systems as on-line monitoring of the structure health. Irrespective of which materials will be used in the future, the current design philosophy, which is applied today by the structural designers, will be challenged by the new design philosophy based on SHM. The most efective SHM methods are based on Lamb wave techniques. Using the based on Lamb wave techniques would be cost-effective and reliable damage detection is critical for the utilization of metal, composite and hybrid materials. Multitude of diagnostics data requires to use expert systems for effective analysis. © 2008, Versita. All rights reserved.