KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS

Structural Health Management an Evolution

in Design
J. YOUNG, E. HAUGSE and C. DAVIS

ABSTRACT

Structural Health Management (SHM) and its related technologies offer the
combined benefits of reducing maintenance costs while preserving or improving
structural design performance. Advanced SHM technology implementation for in-
service aerospace platforms requires a disciplined approach to quantify how each
application can provide benefit in the context of design practices and design and
maintenance criteria. The focus of this paper will be to describe SHM from a broader
integrated design perspective and vision for the future. This will be accomplished by
first providing a brief historical illustration of how design practices have evolved
along with the ability to collect in service knowledge. An overview of SHM from a
design and integration perspective will then be provided, followed by some
examples that demonstrate SHM implementation in the context of a broader design
and maintenance perspective. The paper will conclude with a list of challenges for
the SHM community in the context of a broader integrated design vision.

INTRODUCTION

Figure 1 represents a portion of the history of flight from a structural design

perspective. The figure illustrates how design practices evolved as we gained
knowledge about the operational performance of our structural concepts [1]. With the
Comet failure in 1954, we learned that the use of static loading and a factor of safety
were not sufficient to assure safe life of a pressurized aircraft; specifically, fatigue and
stress concentration factors must be considered. With the catastrophic failure of five
B47’s with less than 2500 hours each, we found that a disciplined aircraft structural
integrity program was necessary to ensure an appropriate airframe life. In 1969 an
F111 failed from a rogue manufacturing flaw at less than 100 hours [2]. We
determined that we needed to account for the existence of flaws because during
manufacturing and material processing it was not economically reasonable to
eliminate or find every one. Usage experience with respect to environmental

Jerry Young, Eric Haugse and Chris Davis, Boeing Co., P.O. Box 3707, Seattle, WA 98124, U.S.A.

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 Figure 1. Design practices have evolved with increased service knowledge.

factors such as humidity and salt exposure were incorporated into supplemental
inspection programs and other preventative maintenance standards.
Finally, the failure of the very flexible Helios vehicle as a result of coupling
between the control system and an extreme gust environment taught us about the
importance of load monitoring to aide control-structure interactions [3]. Full scale
testing often uncovers anomalies which after investigation and with more analysis
and test become explainable. We evolve and improve by incorporating this
knowledge into our design process and identify technological advancements for use
on future vehicles.
At the same time that we are testing, monitoring, inspecting our products, the
performance of our systems are increasing significantly. Missions now might last
days where 50 years ago hours were exceptional. The life of our industry’s products
is now decades where years would have been acceptable in the past. Payloads and
efficiency also have increased significantly. Our ability to analyze has taken us
from static sizing to design for safe life/fail safety. Design cases or load cases have
gone from a handful to tens of thousands. And finally the data associated with each
of these designs and their certification has grown from notebooks to terabytes. It is
truly a daunting task to create knowledge from of all of this data and information.
So we are more informed with each design cycle as we learn about the last. Our
assurance of safety has evolved with our experience and knowledge. In Ulf
Goranson’s 1997 keynote speech at the Stanford workshop for Structural Health
Monitoring, he characterized structural safety as an evolutionary accomplishment
[4]. He described the evolutionary approach based on attention to design features,
acquisition and review of fleet service data, use of technology standards to ensure
analysis commonality across the fleet, and finally teardowns on older aircraft. He
detailed how designing and monitoring the health of an airframe during its life was
an integral process. Experience through test and in service operations was evaluated
and incorporated through “standard technology” back into the design and process.
Ulf showed how velocity, gravitational acceleration, and altitude (VGH) sensors
were used to alter operations of the fleet and improve life. Similarly, design
technology standards reduced the number of fatigue findings in subsequent
generations of airframe structure and the use of teardown and inspection improved
these standards for the future. The approach was institutionalized at Boeing through
the use of the Boeing Design Manuals as shown in Figure 2. Ulf noted in
conclusion that “monitoring” the health of the fleet and institutionalizing
disciplined technology standards resulted in an order of magnitude reduction in
fatigue and corrosion findings in the second generation fleet.

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 Figure 2. Disciplined technology standards have enabled an evolution in design.

SHM AS AN INTEGRATED DESIGN ELEMENT

Within the technology development community there may be a perception, as

illustrated in Figure 3, that advancement in structural health management is the use
of sensors to monitor and assure the health of the airframe. These sensors can be
correlated to the state of a particular piece of structure and tell us the condition of
the structure. There are many difficulties which the community has been struggling
with for years: 1) false negatives and false positives. 2) local versus global
coverage, 3) assessing viable operational concepts that provide value, 4) how to
best transition new technology without proven reliability, and 5) the impact and
cost of integrating and maintaining SHM sensors and supporting hardware. All of
these concerns contribute to a lack of trust in a “after market” SHM system.
Addition of new technologies must assure safety under existing certification.
In the health management system that Ulf laid out, the design and monitoring
capability were integrated from the beginning. This is the reality of our current
paradigm. We need systems for gathering data that are an integral part of the
design, production, certification, and support of the airframe. This allows the
design and system to evolve together such that our criteria and design can benefit
directly from the advancements in sensors and data processing technology.
The reality of our design process is that we don’t know everything about the
state of the material due to processing and manufacture and the environment or
usage our products will see. If somehow we had complete knowledge, then we
could have a perfect design with zero margin of safety. Since we can not and do
not know it all before we field our products, we should ask: What data we should
know before we start? What assumptions should we make about quality? What
allowances should we make for usage or abusage during service? These questions
represent an opportunity for technology advancements. What new data could be
gathered and processed to provide knowledge of state throughout a structure’s
service life?

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 Figure 3. SHM technology must be integral with design and design criteria

Figure 4. Technology implementation must follow a disciplined approach.

Increased knowledge during the operational phase of an aerospace system can

relieve us from trying to know it all before we field a product and provide more
latitude during the design and maintenance processes. If we must design for the
worst scenario regardless of history and usage and likelihood, we must put criteria
in place which covers these events. The challenge is to develop a system that
provides the information to make decisions well in advance of an event.
A disciplined approach when implemented allows us to define structural health
management for the aircraft structure in the future. We ask ourselves what we need
to maintain our products in service. Definition of service is an early understanding
of the Concept of Operation (CONOP) for the product and its integration into
operational use. Data must provide a complete picture in a timely manner. We
must have methods to diagnose data and construct information such that we can
create the knowledge we need to make decisions. These decisions are how to
maintain, manage or improve the product. As we look to new product designs or
extension of service life for an existing product through the use of advanced
technology, we must follow a disciplined approach such that in Ulf’s words we
have a standard technology for the future. Figure 4 illustrates the elements that
should be considered as part of a disciplined process to standardize and advance
technology.
Today we have a fantastic set of diagnostic tools at our disposal, as illustrated in
Figure 5. New test methods with the computer enhanced visualization. Data is
instantly turned into information available to the engineer in near real time. Our
computational tool set has been enhanced by high speed computing. Our capability

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Figure 5. New capabilities help all phases of a design’s life cycle to enable gathering data
that develops and optimizes in service knowledge and its use.

and appetite for analysis has kept pace with Moore’s law challenging software,
hardware and engineering capability. Today we are able to look at our products
from atoms to airplanes. Computational materials tools are used as well as
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to understand the details of every aspect of
our design. We put sensors on the vehicle to measure what actually happens to the
vehicle in service. This diagnostic tool set is tightly coupled together and
interconnected across scales in an effort to optimize knowledge about a product
throughout its life cycle.

EXAMPLES: TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION WITH DESIGN CRITERIA

We have seen significant improvements in software, computing capability,

diagnostic hardware, and engineering methodologies over the past 10 years. But
implementation of advanced SHM technologies into operational platforms has been
limited. We have seen advancements in nondestructive inspection techniques, but
integration with and impact on product design is limited. As illustrated in Figure 6,
tomorrow’s vision must include a much more integrated solution, where designs
and design criteria are developed with advanced SHM technologies in mind. SHM
technologies must be developed by evaluating them in the context of new criteria
and advancements in other design tools and practices. The following examples will
provide some insight into the implementation of advanced SHM technologies.
Manual structural inspection intervals are currently defined using Durability and
Damage Tolerance methodology. The approach uses a combination of estimated
load spectrum, structural analysis, fatigue testing, and nondestructive evaluation
(NDE) methods to determine key inspection locations, and how often inspections
should be conducted. First, as illustrated in Figure 7, an inspection threshold is
determined to detect an initial crack size (smallest crack size detectable by an NDE
technique that satisfies probability of detection criteria). Crack growth analysis and
criteria are then used to set regular inspection intervals in order to detect cracks
before they result in negative structural design margins.

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 Figure 6. Tomorrow’s vision must include a much more integrated solution.

Figure 7. Operational usage knowledge used to change inspection criteria.

The use of advanced SHM technologies like flight parameter based load
monitoring can be used to trigger inspections autonomously. In one scenario,
operational loads can be monitored and used to set manual inspection intervals as
opposed to the current method that uses an analytically estimated load spectrum. In
a more rigorous scenario, load monitoring can again be used to set inspection
intervals, but the inspections would be carried out autonomously using sensors,
material modeling, and damage sizing algorithms as opposed to manual inspections.
This type of change would of course need to be considered in the context of overall
aircraft system inspection practices.
In addition to reducing maintenance costs, it is suggested that this approach
could also be used early in the product development phase to reduce design
conservatism with the understanding that there would be more knowledge about the

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usage and integrity of the structure during its operation. Advanced SHM
technologies then become design elements, providing additional data, information,
and knowledge to better optimize at the system level, across the life cycle of the
platform.
To assess the potential impact that load monitoring could have on inspection
interval, Boeing utilized real time operational load data recorded by the University
of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI). The FAA’s Airborne Data Monitoring
Systems Research Program funded this data collection. The data was used by
Boeing to perform a durability and damage tolerance analysis and compare the
results to the same analysis using design load spectrum. As shown in Figure 8, for
many of the airplane data sets, preliminary results indicate that inspection intervals
could be increased based on load monitoring and thereby demonstrates potential
benefit. It should, however, be pointed out that this analysis is still in progress and
that inspection intervals might not be defined based on fatigue loading alone.
The example shown in Figure 9 illustrates the use of flight parameter data and
design modeling tools to evaluate the impact of a hard landing event. The pilot-
initiated reporting of such events results in maintenance actions that require in-
depth inspections which can cause significant down-time and labor costs. The
complexity of the dynamic event coupled with the random “event severity
estimation ability” of the pilot can result in false report rates (i.e., no damage found
during the required inspection) in excess of 85% of the time. The maintenance
process could be significantly improved if knowledge of the loads generated during
the landing event were available to guide the inspection or, in some cases, perhaps
even negate the need for one. Direct measurement of load-related quantities (e.g.,
strain and/or acceleration) at every significant structural item that is sized or
affected by landing loads can be costly. The goal of this study was to show how
flight-parameter-based models could be constructed to estimate landing loads that
would, in turn, aid the maintenance process. The challenge was to develop the right
model with the right set of inputs that was reliable and economically and
technically feasible.
Fortunately, high fidelity physics-based dynamic models of the landing event
exist and are validated. These time-domain models couple rigid and flexible

Figure 8. Operational loads monitoring shows significant potential value.

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 Figure 9. Hard landing detection system demonstrates load monitoring capability.

structural dynamic models with aerodynamic models. The approach state (e.g.,
attitude, velocity, acceleration) of the aircraft along with aircraft configuration (e.g.,
weight, c.g. location) and runway condition (e.g., dry, wet, icy) define the initial
conditions and configuration of the model. The model outputs time varying loads at
predetermined significant structural items. In order to provide such high fidelity
results, however, the models must also be quite detailed and thus require significant
computational resources to run. As it would not be feasible to field a practical
solution with such a complicated model, the technology challenge was to develop a
lower fidelity model that could approximate the response of the detailed model
using readily available data and information. Readily available data and
information included flight parameter data (e.g., airspeed, sink rate, roll and pitch
attitude, etc.) that would typically be available on one of the many aircraft bus
systems and potentially additional structural sensors (e.g., strain gage,
accelerometer, temperature, etc.).
An in-depth study was performed that traded model inputs and topologies.
Model performance was ranked by the ability to correctly predict the loads with
limited false positives and no false negatives. The “tolerance” for false positives
was traded against adding dedicated structural sensors. Results of the study showed
that a flight parameter only solution could reduce the percentage of false positives
from 85% to approximately 5%.
The example illustrated in Figure 10 is focused on structural criteria to address
damage caused impact events during operational usage. Once an event is identified
by the ground or flight crew, it must be measured to determine the level of damage.
If damage is within predefined range, a rapid field repair process could be used to
restore strength to ultimate load carrying capability. Advanced SHM technology
offers the potential to significantly reduce the time to determine damage size and
minimize costly down time for the aircraft.
The SHM damage evaluation method will have some uncertainty that must be
considered as indicated by the damage detection error bar in Figure 10. This

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example offers the possibility of trading SHM sizing capability and reliability
against structural design criteria and repair capability.
The field repair example was an eye opener with respect to SHM design
requirements and objectives. Sizing damage in three dimensions at barely visible
impact damage (BVID) levels to meet Design Requirements and Objectives
(DR&Os) was a significant challenge. This application demonstrated the need to
develop the methods and tools to integrate SHM hardware design and data
processing algorithms with structural design criteria. Models for sensor systems and
processing algorithms needed to be coupled with physics based material models to
develop and trade virtual design options prior to validation testing.
This example illustrated in Figure 11 is a condition based maintenance (CBM)
approach. It combines the concepts of operational load monitoring, with in service
damage monitoring, in the context of reliability based criteria. The calculation of an

Figure 10. Damage sizing information is considered an element of repair design and
criteria to help optimize the repair design process.

Figure 11. A change in analysis and design criteria enables new technology integration [5].

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Equivalent Initial Flaw Size (EIFS) along with operational loads collected by an
individual aircraft usage monitoring system are key pieces of information needed to
enable a reliability based approach. Sufficient crack data is collected during fatigue
testing to develop initial EIFS probability distributions. The EFIS distributions are
then used during operations along with load monitoring data to predict damage
growth information. It is suggested that an additional and continued improvement to
this approach could be accomplished by collecting critical crack length detection
data during operational usage. A probability distribution for crack length detection
in time could then be used to further update EIFS distributions and thereby further
improve reliability based estimates for damage growth.
This is a very illustrative example as it brings together advanced SHM
technologies in the context of reliability based criteria needed to provide the kind of
knowledge that enables a CBM approach. It also offers the ability to update
knowledge as we learn from operational data collected over a product’s life.

CONCLUDING REMARKS AND SOME TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGES

As illustrated in Figure 12, each of the examples in the last section described
applications where advanced SHM technologies could be integrated, at varying
levels, as part of an aerospace vehicle’s design criteria and maintenance practice.
In Ulf Goranson’s 1997 keynote speech, he characterized structural safety as an
evolutionary accomplishment. He described an evolving approach based on
attention to design features, acquisition and review of fleet service data, and the use
of technology standards to ensure commonality across the fleet. He detailed how
designing and monitoring the health of an airframe during its life was an integral
process and how life cycle experience was evaluated and incorporated through
“standard technology” back into the design process.
In the past twelve years we have seen significant improvements in software and
computing capability, diagnostic hardware, engineering methodologies, and new or
enhanced design criteria. However, implementation of advanced SHM technologies
into design practices and operational platforms has been limited.
To increase implementation of new SHM technology, tomorrow’s vision must
continue to focus on an integrated approach, where designs and design criteria are
developed with advanced SHM technologies in mind. SHM technologies must be
developed by evaluating them in the context of a new CONOPS paradigm, new
criteria, and advancements in other design tools and practices.
Figure 13 lists some suggested areas for development in the context of an SHM
process flow from data to decision making. As discussed in the first part of this
paper and demonstrated in the examples, it has been found that the most effective
development of new technologies should be done in the context of this overall
process that starts with understanding the CONOPS for which decisions will be
made about the integrity of the structural design. Next we need to understand the
data and first hand information needed to develop knowledge about the state of the
material and structure used in the design in the context of the CONOPS. The
challenges shown in Figure 12 are based on this understanding and are focused on
gathering high quality data, processing it with analytic methodologies that best fit
the targeted design to glean the most knowledge of state, and allowing for changes
in criteria and CONOPS that optimizes the safety and performance of our products.

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Figure 12. Application examples demonstrate strong tie between design practices and
criteria and the integration of advancements of SHM technologies.

Figure 13. SHM challenges to meet a disciplined approach for integration with design and
maintenance practices.

REFERENCES

1. Babish, IV, C.A. 2008. “USAF ASIP: Protecting Safety for 50 Years”, presented at the 2008
Aircraft Structural Integrity Program Conference, 2-4 December 2008.
2. Redmond, Gerard. 2001. “From ‘Save Life’ to Fracture Mechanics – F111 Aircraft Cold
Temperature Proof Testing at RAAF Amberley,” presented at the 10th Asia-Pacific Conference
on Non-Destructive Testing Conference, 17-21 September 2001.
3 Noll, T.E., S.D. Ishmael, B. Henwood, M.E., Perez-Davis, G.C. Tiffany, J. Madura, M. Gaier,
J.M. Brown, and T. Wierzbanowski. 2007. Technical Findings, Lessons Learned, and
Recommendations Resulting from the Helios Prototype Vehicle Mishap.. UAV Design
Processes/Design Criteria for Structures, pp. 3.4-1 – 3.4-18.
4. Goranson, U.G. 2008. “Jet Transport Structures Performance Monitoring”, presented at the
1997 International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, 18-20 September 1997.
5. Gallagher, J.P., C.A. Babish, and J.C. Malas. 2005. Damage tolerant risk analysis techniques for
evaluating the structural integrity of aircraft structures. Proceedings of the Structural Integrity
in Transportation Systems Symposium, 11th International Conference on Fracture, March, in
Turin, Italy.
6. Torng, T., K. Chan, and K. Liu. “Development of an Integrated Durability and Damage
Tolerance Risk Assessment Strategy for ASIP”, ASIP Conference (2009).

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