Localização de danos estruturais utilizando ondas guiadas e impedância eletromecânica

Abstract

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems have evolved every year in the Aerospace area due to the high costs involved in aircraft, in addition to the need to prevent many human lives from being endangered. Therefore, this work presents the study of the detection and location of structural damage in an aircraft wing using piezoelectric materials. As a methodology, two techniques for monitoring the integrity of the structure are compared, namely the Guided Wave method and the Electromechanical Impedance (EMI) technique, applied to an experimental prototype of an aluminum plate representing a cut of an airplane wing. For this, algorithms implemented in the Labview software are used, which enabled the measurement of the wing's vibratory response by a signal acquisition system. Thus, from experimental tests, it was possible to obtain the Frequency Response Functions (FRF) of the healthy structure and in simulated damage conditions and, with this, measure, quantify and locate the presence of damage from two indices (RMSD and H2 norm). From the results obtained, for the three damage conditions simulated through the addition of a fixed mass and variation of its positioning in the built prototype, it was possible to locate the damage region by the paths generated in the Guided Waves technique. By the EMI technique, the most satisfactory result was obtained in the 3rd operating condition, identifying the damage close to PZT3 and thus, complementing the location found in path 1-3 by the Guided Waves technique. Therefore, the results proved the feasibility of detecting structural damage in aircraft wings using piezoelectric materials, as well as showing the importance of adopting more than one SHM technique for better monitoring of the structure.