Smart Monitoring System for Aircraft Structures

TRIADE is a European Union project that focuses on the development of technological building blocks for Structure Health Monitoring (SHM) sensing devices in aeronautics. It is funded under the 7th framework program. In terms of objectives, the TRIADE project focuses on providing these technological building blocks and fully integrated prototypes in order to achieve power generation, power conservation, energy management and embedded powerful intelligence for data processing and storage for SHM sensing devices. The principal technological building blocks that the TRIADE project will provide are: - A low profile battery with high energy density which will be able to function in a harsh environment, - An energy harvester from vibration and electromagnetic RF, - Ultra low power sensors which will be designed in SOI technology, and - A neural network for data recording and damage assessment. The smart tag will be the size of a credit card (dimension 85x55x4 mm) and will support remote sensors. It will be embedded under the last composite layer or attached on the structure of the aircraft. It will be autonomous as all the power needed will be provided by the onboard rechargeable battery. It is wireless and the data stored will be transferred to the base station by using the RFID communication protocols through an RFID reader. It will record temperature, relative humidity, pressure, strain, vibration and acoustic emissions whenever the flight domain is overrun. The structure health monitoring capability that the TRIADE project offers is planned to be applied in 2 application domains: on helicopters with Eurocopter and PZL Swidnik as end-users, and on airplanes with EADS Deutschland GmbH and Dassault Aviation as end-users. The different requirements from each end-user have been unified on the smart tag with minimal compromises to accommodate of.