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Next generation structural health monitoring

and its integration into aircraft design
a
C. Boller
a
DaimlerChrysler Aerospace, Military Aircraft, MÜnchen, D-81663, Germany
Published online: 26 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: C. Boller (2000) Next generation structural health monitoring and its integration into
aircraft design, International Journal of Systems Science, 31:11, 1333-1349

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 International Journal of Systems Science, 2000, volume 31, number 11, pages 1333 ± 1349

Next generation structural health monitoring and its integration

into aircraft design

C. BOLLER{

Structural health monitoring (SHM) has become increasingly important with regard to
ageing aircraft, required enhanced performance and the need to reduce aircraft opera-
tional cost. A€ ordable advanced miniaturized sensors and continuous improvement in
data processing technology combined with powerful software algorithms has allowed
Downloaded by [Old Dominion University] at 07:27 13 July 2013

non-destructive testing (NDT ) to become an integral part of structural materials and

has thus given structures a self-sensing functionality. T his paper describes where to
integrate SHM into the aircraft design process and how to validate the established
loads monitoring process in comparison to an emerging damage monitoring solution,
before more precisely describing a technology selection regarding damage monitoring.
Acousto-ultrasonic s is a technique being especially emphasized. Results from labora-
tory experiments will be shown and commented and a perspective of future trends will
be given.

1. Aircraft design and structural health monitoring
Structural health monitoring has become an important
issue in the design phase of aircraft, usually not directly
requested by the aircraft operator. What the operator
directly requests beside the standard aerospace levels of
security and reliability is a high rate of operational avail-
ability of the aircraft, low maintenance cost and the
possibility to take full advantage of the aircraft’s
performance, the latter being especially relevant with
military aircraft regarding air-combat superiority. The
operator therefore expresses his or her requirements in
terms of :
. payload, range, manoeuvre, speed, landing sink-
speed, stall speed, takeo€ and landing distances;
. safety and reliability;
. operational life;
Based on these requirements, where none of them
directly expresses structural health monitoring, a
design process is initiated in the way described by
Raymer (1992). This process is the interaction between
the requirements, a design concept, the design analysis,
and the sizing and trade studies and can be drawn as a
`design wheel’ as shown in ® gure 1.
Sequentially the aircraft design process can be divided
into the three phases shown in ® gure 2.
Finally, when specifying conceptual design in more
detail, three sub-phases can be identi® ed, which are con-
cept sketch, initial layout and revised layout, respect-
ively (® gure 3).
Sizing and
Trade Studies

. cost of acquisition, operation and resale (life cycle

cost) ;
. ease in operation and access ;
Requirements Design Analysis
. environmental impact;
. customer (e.g. passenger) appeal.

Design Concept
Accepted 3 August 1998.
{ DaimlerChrysler Aerospace, Military Aircraft, D-81663
MuÈnchen/Germany. e-mail: christian.boller@ m.dasa.de Figure 1. The `design wheel’ (Raymer 1992).
International Journal of System s Science ISSN 0020± 7721 print/ ISSN 1464± 5319 online # 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http ://www.tandf.co.uk /journals
 1334 C. Boller

Requirements priate propulsion system. Because aerodynamics,

weights and propulsion are in interaction between each

{
Will it work?
What does it look like? other, an optimum solution may only be determined
CONCEPTUAL What requirements drive the design? through an interaction process.
DESIGN What trade-offs should be considered?
What should it weigh and cost? From that process it becomes apparent that loads
play the major role in describing the operational

{
Freeze the configuration environment of the aircraft. These loads can not just
Develop lofting
PRELIMINARY Develop test and analytical base be limited to aerodynamic loads e.g. resulting from
DESIGN Design major items ¯ ight manoeuvres and gusts, but also have to include
Develop actual cost estimate
`loads’ resulting from environmental conditions (e.g.

{
Design the actual pieces to be built humidity, corrosion, irradiation) , hazards (e.g. bird
DETAIL Design the tooling and fabrication process strike, foreign objects, lightning) or human error in
DESIGN Test major items - structure, landing gear, etc.
Finalize weight and performance estimates general (e.g. overloads, tool drops, ground vehicle colli-
sions). All these loads can signi® cantly vary in their
Fabrication level, sequence and frequency of occurrence, and can
thus not be predicted. For the design process this scatter
Figure 2. Three phases of aircraft design (Raymer 1992).
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in level, sequence and frequency of loads has therefore

It is speci® cally in the initial layout phase where
boundary conditions of structural aspects are discussed
for the ® rst time. Based on the requirements regarding
payload, range, speed and manoeuvre, the initial layout
starts with aerodynamic design, which consequently
leads to aerodynamic loads. These loads have to be
withstood by the aircraft structure which thus leads to
an initial layout of the aircraft structure itself. This
allows a ® rst estimate of the aircraft’s weight and thus
allows to make an initial selection regarding an appro-
to be based on assumptions mainly derived from past
experience.
One of the prerequisites in structural design is that the
structure has to withstand the operational loads over its
design life which means that exceedance of critical
damage inducing structural strength is not allowed to
occur. Structural strength can again show some remark-
able scatter which may be reduced through enhanced
knowledge in material science and manufacturing tech-
nology. To account for this scatter, a number of
assumptions have again been made, where the relation-

Design Requirements New Concept Ideas

Technology Availability

Iterate Iterate
Concept Sketch Initial Layou t Revised Layou t

Aerodynamics Aerodynamics

Weights Weights

Propulsion Propulsion

Cost

Structur es

Landing Gear

etc.

Sizing and Performance Refined Sizing &

First Guess Sizing Optimization Performance Optimization

PRELIMINARY DESIGN

Figure 3. Aircraft conceptual design process (Raymer 1992).

 Structural health monitoring
Knowledge
Metals
Composites
Smart
Materials
Assumptions
Figure 4. Knowledge in diŒerent classes of materials and
required number of assumptions for structural design.
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ship between accumulated knowledge and required
number of assumptions can be qualitatively summarized
for the di€ erent classes of materials as shown in ® gure 4.
To account for the negative e€ ects of scatter and
missing knowledge, three solutions become apparent
from a designer’s point of view
. Reduce allowable stresses to a level where damage
de® nitely does not become critical
. Compile as much knowledge as possible generated on
damage mechanisms and include them in a design
guideline
. Increase inspection/ monitoring e€ ort.
The ® rst solution is what is traditionally done in safe-
life design where only monitoring of the life (e.g. ¯ ight
hours) is required. The penalty of the reduced allowable
stresses is, however, increased structural weight, which
may also result in increased operational cost.
The generation of knowledge through coupon, com-
ponent and major aircraft fatigue testing has led to
improved fatigue damage-resistan t design. More than
four decades of major aircraft fatigue testing at Boeing
have shown that the number of fatigue damages
detected from one test to the next has decreased con-
tinuously (Goranson 1997). This is due to the experience
gathered in previous tests as well as very careful docu-
mentation in a handbook (Boeing 1973). This documen-
tation combined with further knowledge gained in
fracture mechanics has ® nally also led to fail-safe
design in aircraft structures.
Fail-safe design ® nally leads to the third of the fore-
mentioned solutions. If no redundancy is built into the
structure (damage tolerance) an increased inspection/
monitoring e€ ort is required. Based on the geometry of
the damage detected, the fatigue life up to the next
1335
inspection is determined analytically using fracture
mechanics combined with standardized loading
sequences. This procedure is however, only bene® cial
when the fatigue critical locations are quite well
known. Furthermore, non-destructive inspection of
structural components is very much manpower related
today, which can have a signi® cant impact on opera-
tional cost. It is therefore a question of how far auto-
mation and especially the e€ orts being related to the
integration and adaptation of sensing elements into or
onto the structural components can be realized. This is
what is ® nally also termed as structural health moni-
toring (SHM) in the smart structures research ® eld.
An attempt and aid to decide if such e€ orts towards
SHM can be bene® cial may be given by the simple rela-
tionship shown in ® gure 5.
For a well-de® ned inspection environment and a
speci® c component, the relationship between cost CK
for acquiring knowledge and cost CI for performing
inspection is assumed to be qualitatively hyperbolic.
The open question is, however: How does this relation-
ship look like quantitatively? The little information we
have today is mainly that we know the actual inspection
cost of the component or aircraft considered. What we
usually do not know is the cost spent so far for
accumulating knowledge or the cost for acquiring
knowledge in the future. This information is, however,
not fully required. The answer to a question: `Should we
invest into technology for structural health monitoring
or not?’ can be easily given on a di€ erential basis. As
long as dCK =dCI > ¡1, investment into structural
health monitoring is worth doing, where dCK and dCI
represent the investment in knowledge/ technology and
the reduction in inspection cost, respectively.
Acquisition of the appropriate data will therefore
allow relevant decision, to be made.
Cost for Know ledge
Acquisition
ne
Li
n
ve
ke
ea
Br
Available point
of information
dCK
dCI
Cost for Inspection
Figure 5. A relationship between inspection and knowledge
cost.
 1336 C. Boller
2. Loads monitoring versus damage monitoring
The aforementioned design principles reveal loads to be
a suitable parameter for monitoring. Actual in-¯ ight
monitoring of aircraft today is therefore based on opera-
tional loads using either conventional strain gauges or
¯ ight parameters. A variety of recent systems is
described in AGARD (1991).
The use of strain gauges directly correlates with the
established techniques being used in major fatigue or
static tests during the design phase. However, strain
gauges ± or sensors in general ± used for in-¯ ight
monitoring have to withstand the conditions of the
operational environment which can be signi® cantly
di€ erent when compared to a laboratory environment.
Furthermore, a 100% reliability of the sensors can never
be guaranteed, especially not in the in-service environ-
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ment. The more sensors are used, the more the overall
reliability of the SHM system is going to decrease, which
results in an increase of erroneous information and is
thus a reason for some operators not considering such a
system.
An alternative to the strain gauge based system is a
¯ ight parameters based system, where sensing informa-
tion is obtained from sensors already built into the air-
craft, monitoring parameters, e.g. speed, height,
acceleration and many others. These sensors have
proven airworthiness and are thus widely accepted.
However, loads have to be analytically determined
from the sensor information, which needs good knowl-
edge about the required load transfer functions.
In both cases, strain gauge based as well as ¯ ight
parameters based, the actual operational load sequence
is monitored. This information is quite useful, because it
allows the operator as well as the manufacturer to
control if the aircraft has still been used inside the
design limits or not. Based on this information the
operator and speci® cally the manufacturer is now able
to go back into the design principles and determine how
much a load exceedance might reduce the aircraft’s
operational life or ± in the opposite case of loads falling
below the design limits ± how far the aircraft’s opera-
tional life might be extended. In any case this determina-
tion of fatigue life is performed analytically and is thus
based on a variety of assumptions, e.g. as regarding
damage accumulation, load transfer to critical
damage-sensitive locations, environmental conditions
or scatter of the material properties themselves. The
result of the predicted fatigue life can therefore easily
vary by a factor of two compared to the real fatigue
life, which is state-of-the-art in fatigue life prediction.
The algorithms for generating the loads, describing the
load transfer and predicting the fatigue life are therefore
mainly part of the available loads monitoring systems.
Beside strains, other monitoring parameters may also
be used, e.g. temperature, pressure or vibrations. This is,
e.g. performed with Engine condition monitoring
(ECM) systems, where a network of sensors informs if
critical engine parameters are within the operational
range or not. Integrated health and usage monitoring
systems (IHUMS) is another example which has
become quite popular for helicopters, and is commer-
cially available. These systems have been developed for
gears and are based on monitoring acoustic signals
being generated from the various rotating parts of the
gear.
What the operator and manufacturer, however, really
wants to know from the loads sequences generated and
the fatigue life predicted is, if a possible overload has or
when exactly the loads sequence will have caused
damage to his aircraft. The only possibility for obtaining
this information today is by performing non-destructive
testing (NDT) with handheld equipment following a
well-de® ned inspection procedure. This way of inspec-
tion can, however, become quite costly when intervals
between the inspections become relatively short, which
is especially true when inspection is labour intensive and
requires the aircraft to be taken out of service. With the
improvements and cost reductions in sensor technology,
sensor signal processing, composite materials manu-
facturing and bonding techniques, a new step in inspec-
tion technology has been initiated which will allow:
. NDT to become an integral part of the structural
material itself ;
. manpower-related inspection e€ ort and thus cost to
be reduced signi® cantly;
. to take better advantage of the structural material’s
potential especially with emerging materials, e.g. com-
posites.
The following sections will therefore describe poten-
tial areas of application and activities trying to approach
this next level of inspection technology.
3. Structural health monitoring and ageing aircraft
One of the big challenges in aircraft structures today is
to deal with the increasing ¯ eet of ageing aircraft.
Although a large number of aircraft have already
achieved their initial design life, the condition and thus
design of these aircraft is still such that they can be cost-
e€ ectively operated beyond that design life. In 1993,
¹51% of the US Air Force ¯ eet had achieved a life of
more than 15 years and 44% was even more than 20
years old. A look to the worldwide commercial ¯ eet of
1997 shows that the numbers were even worse (table 1).
More than two thirds of the ¯ eet were older than 15
years, nearly half of the ¯ eet was older than 20 years
 Structural health monitoring 1337

Table 1. Civil aircraft in service in 1997 (absolute aircraft For existing aircraft and components, only adapta-
numbers in brackets) (Source: Flight International) tion of the damage monitoring systems onto the struc-
ture’s surface is feasible. The sensor signals being
Aircraft >15 years old >20 years old >25 years old
recorded must allow the determination of structural
type (%) (%) (%)
changes that can be correlated to structural degradation,
A300 43 (199) 9 (41) Ð Ð thus allowing the determination of the incident where
747 `Classic’ 68 (493) 34 (244) 20 (144) the structural life has de® nitly expired due to degrada-
L-1011 80 (299) 49 (122) 6 (16) tion.
DC-10 76 (337) 50 (222) 15 (67) One of the major concerns with metallic aircraft in
DC-8 51 (285) 51 (285) 51 (285) general is fatigue cracking (Batelds 1997). This has
727 80 (1464) 53 (970) 32 (591) been proven in various inspections as well as in major
737-100 / 200 71 (810) 35 (395) 21 (241)
aircraft fatigue tests (MAFT). To give an example, 70%
DC-9 83 (813) 73 (717) 58 (563)
Total 72 (4601) 47 (2996) 30 (1907)
of the damages determined in the TORNADO MAFT
resulted from such cracks. Ageing aircraft su€ er signi® -
cantly from the problem of widespread fatigue damage
(WSFD), which mainly occurs in elements and com-
and 30% were even above 25 years old. It is somehow ponents, e.g. lap joints, butt joints, frames, tear straps
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impressing that more than half of the DC-8 ¯ eet ever
built was still ¯ ying in 1997. Similar ® gures can be
expected for aircraft types, e.g. the DC-9, the Boeing
727, the older 737s or even the 747 classics.
The manpower e€ ort required for inspecting an air-
craft is increasing with the aircraft’s life, where numbers
have been given as an example by Sampath (1996). In
1985 ¹2.200 manhours were required per aircraft and
year for inspecting and repairing an EF-111A ® ghter
aircraft. This number signi® cantly increased to 8.000
manhours per year and aircraft in 1996. The weight of
this e€ ort also very much depends on the usage, com-
plexity and size of the aircraft. Kudva et al. (1996)
reported some numbers of 1993 for inspection only,
which have been 88.4 and 29 US$ per ¯ ight hour for a
F-18 and a T-38, respectively. Recently, the US Federal
Aviation Administration has ordered new inspections
and modi® cations of fuselage skin-panel lap joints on
33 older Boeing 737± 100/ 200 with more than 60 000
¯ ights where each inspection is reported to be 14 000±
37 000 US$ per aircraft.
These various numbers may be some indicators for
aircraft inspection becoming an even larger issue
within the next years. Automation of the inspection
process can therefore become essential if cost-e€ ective
solutions are proposed. This may be either realized
through automation of the NDT techniques used
today, e.g. using robots, or by integrating/ adapting
or various types of splices. These damages may result
from overstressing due to misuse, corrosion, counter-
sink-manufacturing defects, disbonds, inadequate
notch geometries or insu cient surface preparation.
Due to the severity of that type of damage, a lot of
attention has been paid to determining the inspection
intervals, where an example is given in ® gure 6
(Schmidt and Brandecker 1992). The traditional stan-
dard inspections are performed up to the point in life
where WSFD is considered to be initiated. Beyond that
point the structure can still be used as long as a special
WSFD inspection is performed, which basically consists
of monitoring the structure at shorter time intervals.
As long as fatigue life and inspection intervals are
determined analytically, fatigue life and crack propaga-
tion curves have to be available. These curves have to be
based on clearly de® ned low probabilities of failure. As
long as scatter in these curves is relatively low, the pre-
dicted fatigue lives match the real fatigue life of the
individual component quite well. However, when fatigue
life scatters signi® cantly ± which can be a factor of two
easily ± a signi® cant portion of the real fatigue life may
remain for the component which cannot be taken
Initiation Onset
Strength of WSFD of WSFD
ultimate

sensors to the conventional structure. While the residual

former case deals with replacing the man by a machine,
the latter case even adds functionality to the structural
material and the structure is ideally now able to sense its Multiple cracks

condition itself at nearly arbitrary intervals with no Flights

signi® cant additional e€ ort. This `continuous’ moni-

toring thus ideally allows for more structural failures Normal inspection Special WSFD Further
inspections actions
to be available in the structure without compromising
de® ned levels of safety and reliability. Figure 6. Example of determining inspection intervals.
 1338 C. Boller

advantage of because the component is analytically con-

sidered to be damaged even though it might still be able
to exceed this design life by 100%. Another aspect being
related to the assumptions in analytical fatigue life esti-
mations is the assumption of linearity in damage accu-
mulation, while in reality damage mostly accumulates
non-linear, with normally little accumulation during
the beginning and more towards the end of the fatigue
life. This is another reason why experimentally obtained
fatigue lives are longer than those being predicted
analytically. These di€ erences in fatigue life can, how-
ever, only be taken advantage of if a material’s or com-
ponent’s damage condition is continuously monitored
such as that done with an SHM system.

Figure 7. Gain in allowable stress through structural health

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4. Structural health monitoring and emerging materials monitoring.

There is a variety of emerging materials considered and
applied in aircraft design. Carbon ® bre-reinforced poly-
mers (CFRP) which have been increasingly applied in
aircraft components over the past two decades is
possibly the best suited candidate to speci® cally show
the rewards of SHM.
One of the major concerns with CFRP is barely
visible impact damage (BVID). This damage is often a
delamination inside the structural material which cannot
be seen with the naked eye from the outside. Although
this damage may not be large initially, it might grow to
critical dimensions as a result of a following loading
sequence. With aircraft structures being used today
this is however avoided by keeping the allowable stresses
below the endurance limit of the material and thus not
allowing the damage to grow. The price to be paid with
such a procedure is additional structural weight, that
could be avoided with a SHM system.
Some numerical estimates were performed in Boller
and Biemans (1997) which allowed to get a feeling of
the bene® ts to be expected when implementing a SHM
system. These bene® ts may be well described as the ratio
of allowable stresses of a structure with SHM built in,
compared to those of a structure without such a system.
This ratio can be expressed as a function of the fol-
lowing parameters:
¼with monitoring
¼without monitoring
Slope of S -N curve
8 9
>
> >
>
> >
>
> Portion damage
< =
ˆ f Damage accumulation exponent a
>
> >
>
>
> Mission length …e:g:flight;
>
: >
inspection interval†
Plotting this ratio of allowable stresses versus the two
most sensible parameters, which is the portion of
damage being induced (e.g. damage in a composite
resulting from an impact) and the damage accumulation
exponent a, leads to a relationship as shown in ® gure 7.
Two conclusions can be drawn from that ® gure
(1) The more damage the structure can tolerate due to
its monitoring capabilities, the more allowable
stresses can be increased.
(2) The more damage is accumulating nonlinearly and
thus accumulating towards the end of structural life
(which is equivalent to a decrease of the damage
accumulation exponent a), the more allowable
stresses can be increased when integrating/ adapting
damage monitoring devices.
This latter conclusion can speci® cally convert the
desire of fatigue designers from requesting linear to
requesting completely nonlinear damage accumulation
behaviour. With respect to the former conclusion it
has to be kept in mind that an increase in allowable
damage will also lead to an increase in required e€ ort
for repair. This increased e€ ort has therefore to be
balanced with the bene® ts of the SHM.
5. Technology selection for structure-integrate d/
adapted damage monitoring systems
Damage monitoring considered here is not based on
monitoring loads and estimating the incident for
>
> damage to occur, but the integration or adaptation of
>
>
sensors onto or into a structure, allowing to directly
monitor the damage itself. NDT thus becomes an
>
>
>
> integral part of the material or structure. This has
; become feasible due to the fact that various types of
sensing elements, e.g. ® bre optic or piezoelectric sensors
have improved their performance signi® cantly regarding
sensitivity, size, reliability and cost over the past years.
 Structural health monitoring 1339

Furthermore, enhancement in computation speed com-
bined with new computation algorithms as well as
miniaturization with microchips has allowed even com-
plex sensor signals to be processed in a reasonable time.
These trends have made new ways of monitoring attrac-
tive, allowing to increase the number of inspection
intervals without increasing inspection time or
decreasing availability of the aircraft and better taking
advantage of the material and structural potential with
the expectation of lowering life cycle cost.
When coming to practical applications, a few ques-
tions have to be raised and answered before integrating
or adapting sensors into or onto structures. These
questions can be summarized as follows
. What is the type of material considered?
. What is de® ned to be damage?
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the damages, the monitoring technique being applied
and the characteristic of the parameter allowing the
characterization of damage. To determine the most
cost-bene® cial monitoring technique, a relative cost
bene® t can be determined from the last column. This
column has, however to be ® lled out individually in
the ® rst place, allowing to obtain a database which
results in relationships allowing to be transferred to
other components. It is ® lled out such that the cost for
an established monitoring technique is normalized to
one and the cost for the alternative monitoring tech-
niques is related to the established one. The most bene-
® cial monitoring procedure can thus be determined by
simply identifying the minimum in the relative cost
values. However to reliably determine these cost
values, detailed information may be required, which
will be described in the following.

. What is the appropriate parameter to describe

damage?
. How to monitor the damage parameter?
. How to detect and monitor damage itself?
. What is the bene® t from and the cost for monitoring?
A guide on how to answer these questions can be
given as a selection table, where an example is shown
in table 2.
This table is basically a summary of information
regarding the materials being considered, the types of
damage to occur, the parameters sensibly reacting to
5.1. Monitoring principles and sensors considered
Before deciding on a speci® c monitoring principle to
be used, information has to be gathered allowing the
answer of the following questions
. What density of sensors is required to reliably detect
the damage considered?
. What e€ ort is required regarding purchasing or poss-
ibly even manufacturing of the sensors as well as the
sensors’ integration and/ or adaptation into or onto
the structure?

Table 2. Selection table for structural health monitoring

Maerial Damage Parameter Mon. Technique Damage detection Rel. cost Bene® t

Metal Crack Length Visual Observation and length measurement

Stress/ strain Strain gauge Change in allowabel strain
Load sequence Fatigue life evaluation
Flight param. Load sequence Fatigue life evaluation
Sound Acoustic emission Burst
Ultrasonics Change in refelected signal
Vibration Modal analysis Change in FFT-spectrum
Change in mode shape (curvature)
Lamb waves Change in transmitted waves
El. resistance Crack gauge Change in resistance
Eddy current Change in resistance
Wear Thickness Visual Observation and thickness measurement
Sound Acoustic emission Burst
Ultrasonics Change in re¯ ected signal
Corrosion Thickness Visual Observation of corrosive product
Sound Acoustic emission Special friction events
Ultrasonics Change in re¯ ected signal
Vibration Modal analysis Change in FFT-spectrum
Change in mode shape (curvature)
Lamb waves Change in transmitted waves
El. resistance Eddy current Change in resistance
Chem. reaction Chem. sensing Occurance of chem. reaction
 1340
. What kind of sensor signals are generated?
. What kind of methods and means are required for
processing of the sensor signals?
. How good is the reliability of the monitoring
system considered and what amount is required for
maintenance?
. What is the cost for purchasing, implementing and
running the monitoring system?
From the various NDT techniques being used today,
only a few can be considered to be technically su -
ciently mature for being used in a structure-integrate d
damage monitoring system (Boller 1999). These include
strain, modal analysis, lamb waves, acoustic emission
and acousto-ultrasonics . Advantages and disadvantage s
of each of these techniques have to be put in accordance
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with the speci® c situation of monitoring. Strain is locally
quite sensible and might therefore just be used when the
location of possible damage is very well known (e.g.
around a bolt or a rivet) and the allowable damage is
relatively large. Modal analysis can be quite sensitive
when either a crack is perpendicular to the loading direc-
tion (e.g. a surface crack on a bent plate) or the size of
the damage is no less than 10% of the surface area being
monitored by a sensor (e.g. delamination in composite
materials). It has thus to be kept in mind that moni-
toring of a small delamination will require a dense net-
work of sensors (e.g. a delamination of 5 mm in
diameter requires a sensor network with sensors
approx. every 50 mm to detect the damage). The big
advantage of lamb waves is that they can propagate
over long distances. However much care is required to
® nd the right angle for inducing the lamb waves, espe-
cially when the structure to be monitored is of a geo-
metric shape much more complex than the plates being
usually tested. Acoustic emission is well established for
determining cracks in metals and can also be applied for
determining damage in polymer-based composites.
However the high ratio of acoustic signal damping in
these latter materials must be kept in mind, which can
lead to a sensor being required every 10 cm, depending
on the frequency to be monitored. Also noise not being
generated from the damage can have a negative impact
on the sensor signals being monitored. Acousto-ultraso-
nics is a method that can overcome the problems of
acoustic emission since the sensor signal is generated
from a controllable actuating device and not by the
damage itself. The actuator is mainly a piezoelectric
element as being used for the lamb-wave technique.
Due to the complex sensor signal being monitored a
signi® cant e€ ort is required regarding signal processing.
Advanced methods of signal processing, e.g. neural net-
works, novelty detection, genetic algorithms or wavelet
analysis are potential techniques being used.
C. Boller
From the various sensors proposed, ® bre optics and
piezoelectric sensors are the types of sensors being most
suitable for structural integration or adaptation.
Compared to electrically based sensors, ® bre optic
sensors are known to be advantageou s due to their
light weight, all passive con® gurations, low power utili-
zation, immunity to electromagnetic interference, high
sensibility and bandwidth, compatibility with optical
data transmission and processing, long lifetimes and
low cost (as long as using silicon ® bres).
Disadvantages exist with repairability as long as optical
® bres have to be integrated into the material and placed
according to major occurring stresses and strains for
allowing to obtain reliable data. Fibre optic sensors
have been proven to work for sensing strain as well as
stress waves resulting from acoustic emission. Their
integration into composite materials does not compro-
mise the mechanical properties as long as the percentage
of optical ® bres is signi® cantly low compared to the
remaining ® bre material.
Piezoelectric sensors are traditionally used for moni-
toring accelerations resulting from low- or high fre-
quency vibrations, e.g. for monitoring vibrations in
modal tests, lamb waves or acoustic emission. Usually
piezoceramic crystals are used which are relatively high
weight and brittle. Recently piezoelectric ceramics have
been made available as small plates of di€ erent thick-
ness, which can be cut to sensors of arbitrary geometry.
These sensors may be bonded on the surface of a
structure easily while integration of these sensors into
a structure is still a problem due to the signi® cant
di€ erences in mechanical properties of these materials
and the traditional host materials, e.g. polymers and
the di€ erent reinforcing ® bres. Recent research work is
looking at developing piezoelectric ® bres to be inte-
grated into composite materials.
To overcome the problem of high brittleness of piezo-
electric ceramics, piezoelectric rubbers and paints have
been developed (Hanner et al. 1989, Egusa and Iwasawa
1993). Manufacturing of these materials is based on the
principle that a piezoelectric material is milled into a
very ® ne particulate-sized powder, mixed to a rubber
or epoxy resin and then polarized to again obtain the
piezoelectric e€ ect. Using that kind of material allows to
easily shape the type of sensors and possibly actuators
required according to very speci® c needs. However a
reduction in the sensing and actuation e€ ect is observed
when compared to the original piezoelectric ceramic
material.
Finally piezoelectric polymers made of PVDF are a
further alternative, which have the advantage of high
¯ exibility, low mass, wide-band frequency, high internal
damping and low cost. However, they are e€ ectively best
used as sensors while their actuation function can only
be used when very small actuation forces are required.
 Structural health monitoring
Furthermore, these materials possess a relatively low
Curie temperature, which only allows them to be oper-
ated at temperatures below around 1208C.
6. Sensor Signal processing
One of the key activities in a SHM system is sensor
signal processing and presentation. The way a sensor
signal may be presented is a sensor parameter versus
time. This sensor parameter can be a voltage, wave-
length, temperature or any other kind of physical
parameter which can be determined from the sensor
signal. This time domain signal will tell something
about the structure’s history and may allow the identi-
® cation of some speci® c damaging events as well as loca-
tions.
When considering the eigenmodes of a structure to
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become characteristic the conversion of the time
domain signal into a frequency domain signal becomes
important, which allows to determine if either an eigen-
mode has moved in its frequency or the amplitude in the
eigenfrequency has changed. Furthermore, this
frequency distribution allows the determination of the
eigenfrequencies of the structure which might be useful
for identifying a suitable actuation frequency with
acousto-ultrasonics.
By generating a frequency domain signal through
Fourier transformation the time dependent signal is
lost. A method to combine both time and frequency
has been given through wavelet analysis. This analysis
uses sets of scaled basis functions that can provide a
decomposition in terms of time and frequency simul-
taneously (Staszewski et al. 1997a) . It decomposes a
given function x…t† into a superposition of elementary
functions
t¡b
ga;b …t† ˆ g* …1†
a
with a and b being a dilation (scale) and translation
parameter, respectively, and * denoting a complex con-
jugation. The continuous time scale wavelet is de® ned
as,
… geometric complexity, short bursts of a well de® ned
1 ‡1 t¡b
W gx …a;b† ˆ p x…t†g* dt …2†
a ¡1 a
The wavelet analysis can thus be interpreted as
moving a window g…t† over the time signal and thus
identifying local features in the signal from the position
and scale of the wavelets into which they are de-
composed.
This continuous wavelet transform shows a lot of
redundancy through many wavelet coe cients being of
equal magnitude. Data compression is therefore
required which has been performed through a process
of discretizing a and b in such a way that true ortho-
1341
normal basis functions g…t† can be obtained. This pro-
cess is called orthogonal wavelet transform and is
described in more detail in Staszewski et al. (1997a)
and Mallat (1989). The information being generated
from these compressed data allows to characterize a
speci® c condition of the structure (e.g. no fault). For a
change in the structure’ s condition, these data may
change as well and wavelet analysis may thus be well
used for what is determined as novelty detection.
The possibly large number of sensors used in a
damage monitoring system requires a powerful tool
for handling the sensor signals, where arti® cial neural
networks seem to be highly promising. The network
needs to be trained for the damage-free condition of
the structure before being used to determine the
damaged structure. Training of the damage-free con-
dition may be performed on the structure itself.
Considerations regarding that training have, however,
also been performed based on ® nite element analysis
only. Conditions of the damaged structure may be
trained as well, e.g. by varying the sti€ ness of the dif-
ferent elements (Tomlinson, et al. 1996). Depending on
the number of elements and possible damage conditions,
this might become highly troublesome. An easier way to
approach the problem is to perform what has been
termed to be novelty detection (Worden 1997a, 1997b) .
Here the neural network has a ® lter process whereby the
data are passed through the hidden layers which have
fewer nodes than the input/ output layers. Whenever sig-
nals are sent to the network the pattern vector from the
incoming signals is compared to the pattern vector the
neural network would predict. As long as the di€ erence
between the two vectors is zero, the structure is con-
sidered to be damage free. In all other cases the
system recognizes that something new has happened to
the structure and that a next level of data analysis has to
be started.
Considering lamb waves or acousto ultrasonic tech-
niques the type of input signal plays a highly signi® cant
role. Because the input signal is usually scattered in the
structure on its way to the sensor, which is due to
material inhomogeneities, non-isotropi c behaviour or
frequency have shown to be most suitable. The right
frequency and form needs to be determined from a
trade study and needs to be balanced between the struc-
tural behaviour and the actuators’ characteristics.
An important issue regarding signal processing is also
damage location which is peformed through triangula-
tion. It theoretically requires at least the information
from three independent sensors regarding the arrival
time of the wave being scattered through the damage
and resulting from the aforementioned burst signal.
Information from more sensors or even better
actuator/ sensor combinations is, however, desirable,
 1342 C. Boller
because of the strong scattering e€ ect in an inhomo-
genious material such as a composite. Beard and
Chang (1997) report nine actuator/ sensor combinations
that they have been using for reliably determining the
damage location in a ® lament wound composite tube.
A ® nal desire in damage monitoring is to know more
about the speci® c damage mechanisms. Regarding
polymer-based composite materials it would certainly
be desirable to know if the damage is more related to
® bre breakage or delamination. The former case signi® -
cantly reduces the structural strength and might require
to take the structure immediately out of service, while in
the latter case a signi® cant residual life might still be
expected.
7. Strategies for optimizing structural health
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monitoring
The possibility of positioning sensing elements at arbi-
trary places on a structure can easily lead to the conclu-
sion of covering a whole structure with a dense sensor
network similar to the neural system of the human body.
This might allow the determination of nearly any size of
damage at nearly any location of the structure. In prac-
tical terms for engineering structures this is however far
from being a useful solution because of the following.
. Advanced sensor signal processing techniques applied
today are possibly still far away from those used in the
human body
. Most of the sensor signals generated will be useless
. The cost for signal processing hardware will possibly
absorb all the bene® ts gained through structural
health monitoring
. The reliability of the system will be so low because of
the increased number of false calls or quality assur-
ance cost for the system would become so high, that
application of such a system would be outside of any
discussion.
An optimized solution will therefore require to con-
sider the aspects raised in the following paragraphs
Damage criticality ranking of components. It is worth
analysing the di€ erent components of an aircraft
regarding their damage sensitivity, required in-
spection cost and the rewards to be expected when
implementing a SHM system. A ranking list
according to the expected rewards of each component
will then allow to decide upon the components to be
monitored with the SHM system and thus optimize
the system’ s usage.
Bene® ts resulting from loads monitoring. Damage
monitoring may not be necessarily required in the
® rst place. There are many situations where a loads
monitoring system such as presented in Boller (1994)
for monitoring impacts with piezoelectric sensors can
well solve most of the problem. An example is in-¯ ight
impact loads which still fully rely on the pilot’s judge-
ment who is neither able to quantify nor locate the
impact precisely. Whenever a pilot therefore feels to
have been exposed to a major impact, large areas of
the aircraft have to be inspected. An impact load
monitoring system could signi® cantly reduce this
workload.
Accuracy of damage location. There is no need for the
SHM system to locate damage at an accuracy of a few
millimetres. The e€ ort and thus cost will possibly
increase nonlinearly with increasing accuracy. An
accuracy of ¹1 m is completely su cient. The precise
location and quanti® cation can then be performed
with standard NDT.
Robustness of sensing system. The sensing techniques
to be considered should be selected such that they can
be easily adapted onto the structure by maintenance
people, not requiring special skills, being easy to
replace and withstanding the harsh in-service environ-
ment. Any slight misalignment of the sensors should
be easily compensated through the signal processing
algorithms being applied.
Optimization of sensor placement. The less sensors
required to meet the SHM requirements the better
for the overall reliability, data processing e€ ort and
thus cost for the SHM system. Staszewski et al.
(1997b) have shown that the minimum number of
sensors including their position on the structure can
be identi® ed using optimization procedures, e.g.
genetic algorithms.
Novelty index to speed up damage identi® cation. A very
powerful technique to reduce sensor signal processing
workload is the aforementioned novelty detection.
Actually this technique still requires veri® cation in
practical aircraft applications. Should this veri® cation
however meet all requirements, this method is most
likely to become a key technique of broad acceptance
in SHM due to its relative simplicity.
Actuator signal input. When considering techniques,
e.g. acousto-ultrasonic s or lamb waves, much care
has to be focussed on determining the optimum
input signal of the actuation element. This input
signal sequence and frequency which is usually a
burst of a few cycles only, very much depends on
the structural component considered and may often
be best obtained experimentally.
8. Examples with piezoelectric sensing
There is a variety of examples described in the literature
where a good insight can be received from the proceed-
ings of workshops and conferences recently held
regarding the monitoring aspect in general (e.g.
 Structural health monitoring 1343

8.1. Impact monitoring in composites

Impactor
Str ucture A conventional set-up for monitoring impacts in
structures is schematically shown in ® gure 8.
It consists at least of a sensor and a signal analyser
Actuator Sensor Signal
and might be added by an ampli® er and a ® lter for
Am plifier Filter
Analyzer better analysing the sensor signal. This minimum equip-
ment allows to monitor the impact itself as well as the
structural modes and possible damage signals being
generated. An example of the time domain signals of a
Signal low- and high-mass impact is shown in ® gure 9.
Generator As described in more detail in Boller (1994), two
relationships can be determined from the sensor signals
obtained at di€ erent impact levels. One shows a cor-
relation between the impactor’s contact time with the
Figure 8. Test set-up.
structure and the impactor’s mass, the other a relation-
ship between the maximum voltage emitted by the
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sensor during the impact and the impactor’s speed at

Dulieu-Smith et al. 1997, Chang 1997, Hardegen 1998).
Most of the work is either limited to applying conven-
tional techniques, e.g. modal analysis or acoustic emis-
sion as a conventional NDT technique to real full-scaled
structures or is still related to laboratory-base d case
studies only. The latter speci® cally refers to techniques
where sensors are becoming an integral part of the struc-
tural material.
The following examples will be based on distributed
piezoelectric sensing as described earlier.
the start of the impact. Based on these data, the
impact energy being imposed on the structure can be
determined from the piezoelectric sensor signal. This
allows to determine when the impact energy has
passed a certain threshold value where damage is
expected to occur (® gure 10). Localization of the
impact is also possible by correlating the di€ erences in
wave propagation times of at least three sensors.
For reasons of certi® cation and quanti® cation,
damage has then to be con® rmed through conventional

Figure 9. Example of signals obtained with PVDF sensors.

 1344 C. Boller
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Figure 10. Impact energy parameter monitored by piezoelectric sensor compared to real impact energy being induced.

NDT techniques. Although conventional NDT is still was considered as the no fault condition. The plate was
required, the amount of work for NDT monitoring is instrumented with six piezoceramic elements (PZT
signi® cantly reduced, as it has now only to be performed Sonox P5, 15 £ 15 mm) ® xed in symmetrical con® gura-
on a small surface around the potential damage and also tion on both sides of the crack (® gure 11).
just after a critical load has occurred, compared to the
conventional procedure where monitoring of the
whole structure has to be performed after each sus-
picious incident.

8.2. Damage monitoring in metals

A disadvantag e with the aforementioned impact load
monitoring procedure is that no information is available
when the impact has been missed and has thus not been
recorded. This has led to the conclusion to extend the
procedure described so far by adding at least another
piezoelectric element onto or into the structure for being
used as an actuator (® gure 8). A de® ned signal can now
be emitted into the structure through the actuator and is
recorded from the sensors at any time, thus allowing the
monitoring of the deterioration of the structure indepen-
dent of any damaging event. This procedure, which can
be considered as structure-integrate d acousto-ultrasoni c
monitoring, has been recently examined for monitoring
crack propagation in an aluminium plate (Staszewski
et al. 1998). A rectangular aluminium plate
(400 £ 150 mm) with a 1.5-mm crack initiated by spark
erosion was used in a constant amplitude fatigue experi-
ment under tensile loading. The initial crack in the plate Figure 11. Aluminium plate with piezoceramic sensors.
 Structural health monitoring
The bottom left-hand side piezoelectric element was
used as an actuator from where a Gaussian noise signal
was excited. The frequency range of the excitation was
equal to 25 kHz. The remaining ® ve piezoelectric
elements were used for monitoring.
The experimental data were analysed using wavelet
variance characteristics. Statistical pattern recognition
analysis was used to detect the size of the growing
crack in the plate. This involved similarity analysis.
The mean vector ·- of wavelet variance characteristics
var i xnm , given by
N
1 X
·- …m † ˆ var i xnm
N iˆ1
was calculated for the data representing the initial crack
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length. This vector formed the template for the simi-
larity analysis. The damage index was calculated as an
Euclidian distance between the template ·- and the
wavelet characteristics x- ˆ var x nm , from which the
damage is to be evaluated,
2
dx;· ˆ …x- ¡ ·-†T …x- ¡ ·-†
where T denotes the vector transpose. Figure 12 shows
the damage index as a function of crack length for the
aluminium panel described above. The con® dence and
alarm levels are indicated by dotted and dashed lines,
respectively. So far cracks with a length of ¹6 mm and
more have been able to be detected. Applicability of the
wavelet variance plot has been proven. Smaller cracks
are expected to be detected when using higher frequency
levels.
Figure 12.
1345
8.3. Damage monitoring in composites
A ® rst example where acousto-ultrasonic s has been
applied to a composite component has been recently
published by Beard and Chang (1997). A ® lament
wound tube with a length of 12.5 inches, a radius of
2.5 inches and a wall thickness of 0.055 inches has
been tested. Six piezoceramic (PZT) transducers were
bonded at each end of the tube at an angle of 60 degrees
in the cross-section plane. These transducers could work
as both sensors and actuators. A sine-burst, narrow-
band frequency waveform was generated and sent as a
stress wave through one of the transducers, while the
other transducers worked as sensors where the arriving
stress waves were monitored and recorded on an oscillo-
scope. The actuator’s frequency, which very much
depends on the direction of the incoming wave, was
optimized such that a maximum amplitude response
was obtained at the sensors. This resulted in the A0
lamb mode of 50 kHz and the symmetric S 0 lamb
mode of 250 kHz, respectively.
The burst signal was sent from the di€ erent actuator
elements and recorded by the various sensors in the
undamaged condition of the tube which was considered
as the baseline condition. Then the tube was damaged
by a quasi-static impact which led to a damage
(delamination and small matrix cracks) of ¹1 inch in
length. The burst signals were then again sent into the
structure and recorded by the sensors for the damaged
condition.
For each signal the envelope was determined by
® nding the absolute values of the peaks and using
cubic interpolation for the intermediate points. A scat-
tered wave was then calculated from subtracting the
Crack detection results.
 1346
baseline condition sensor data from the sensor data
recorded for the damaged condition. This allows the
identi® cation of damage, and in comparison with the
actuator input signal, also the arrival time. The arrival
times of di€ erent actuator± sensor pairs were then used
to locate the damage. A special algorithm for localiza-
tion and quanti® cation of the damage has been devel-
oped which allowed to account for the anisotropy in the
material’ s wave propagation behaviour. Feasibility of
detecting, localizing and even quantifying damage on
that ® lament wound tube using acousto-ultrasoni c tech-
niques has been shown experimentally. The achieved
result suggests considering this monitoring technique
to be applied to larger and possibly geometrically even
more complex structures.
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9. Ongoing activities and emerging technologies
For over 20 years the Aircraft Structural Integrity
Program (ASIP) (MIL-STD-1530A, 1975) as well as
others is now under way at the United States Air
Force (USAF). ASIP itself requires that an airframe
be capable of withstanding the growth of an assumed
initial ¯ aw under normal operational usage over a pre-
scribed time interval. This can be well achieved by use of
a monitoring system. To this extent a SHMS has been
designed for the USAF on a modular basis (Kudva et al.
1996, ® gure 13). The system includes sensors, local
preprocessors, a central processor, and software capable
of making aircraft maintenance and logistics decisions.
Individual sensors track strain, acceleration, tempera-
ture, corrosive environment and structural damage.
Due to the modular architecture of the SHMS with
physically distributed units being logically centralized,
excellent ¯ exibility is achieved, allowing for system
Figure 13. SHMS architecture (Kudva et al. 1996).
C. Boller
growth and ease of replacement without impacting the
baseline design.
In Europe, a major EU-funded programme is under
way entitled monitoring on-line integrated technologies
for operational reliability (MONITOR, Ball 1998),
which includes major aerospace manufacturers, sup-
pliers, research establishments and universities. The
objective is to reduce operating cost of aerospace struc-
tures by implementing either a structure-integrate d
loads or damage monitoring system. MONITOR aims
to: (i) understand transport operators requirements and
translate these into a health and usage monitoring
system speci® cation; (ii) develop a monitoring system
that will allow structural usage to be e€ ectively moni-
tored and assessed; (iii) develop a damage detection
system that will allow structural health and integrity to
be e€ ectively monitored and assessed; (iv) con® rm the
performance of prototype health and usage monitoring
systems in ground and in-¯ ight evaluation, and (v) pro-
vide guidelines to best practise in the design, manu-
facture and quali® cation of structurally integrated
sensing systems.
The extensive activities in developing smart tech-
nologies and structures has led structural health moni-
toring to become one of the main topics. The objective
of sensors becoming an integral part of structural
materials and thus of the aircraft structure itself has
opened new perspectives regarding reduced inspection
cost, better con® dence in what is called advanced
materials and even more lightweight design. The struc-
tural health monitoring initiative has furthermore
obtained a signi® cant push due to what is to be de-
veloped as built-in antennae and smart skins. These
skins are designed for control of aerospace structures
and may be used to reduce acoustic noise and vibration,
 Structural health monitoring
drag and skin friction using advanced polymeric smart
materials, MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) and
built-in antennas (Varadan and Varadan 1993).
Applications include smart helicopter rotorblades
with microstrip patch antennas, and detection and dis-
crimination of hostile threats resulting from laser, radio-
frequency and X-rays.
9.1. Smart antennae
Antennae used today in aerospace systems are mainly
applied for communication between the aerospace
vehicle and the ground, between di€ erent vehicles or
for determining any other environmental conditions.
Whenever considering the integration of various sensors
into an aerospace vehicle, antennae could very much
help to collect the information generated by these
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sensors and thus avoid a possibly large amount of
wiring. Varadan and Varadan (1996) have made sugges-
tions on how to remotely transmit the sensor signal
information via electronically steerable antennae
(® gure 14).
Care is, however, required with regard to the situation
that other electromagnetic e€ ects may a€ ect the sensor
signals being transmitted. Recently, such a system has
been proposed for three dimensional monitoring of
¯ aws in materials (Varadan et al. 1995).
9.2. Sensory Skins
Within the satellite attack warning and assessment
¯ ight experiment (SAWAFE), di€ erent types of sensors
have been tested for viable on-orbit health and status
monitoring (Obal and Sater 1992). The technology goals
were to de® ne the nature of an attack, provide aware-
Figure 14. Wireless Telemetry for Health Monitoring of Aircraft (Varadan and Varadan 1996 )
1347
ness of tampering with the space platform or its primary
sensors, and provide collateral information for failure
analysis. Pyroelectric polymer ® lms, e.g. PVDF were
considered for infrared laser detection. Si/ Au thermo-
couples have been selected for continuous wave response
indication. Multiple layer coatings to be deposited on
the polymer for providing selective absorption at speci® c
wavelengths have been considered. Electronics for pre-
ampli® cation are provided by surface mounted packages
on ¯ exible printed circuit board substrates to maintain
conformability. For X-ray sensing charged couple
devices (CCDs) and special types of ® bre optics were
developed where the latter was glass darkening ® bres
and scintillation ® bres, respectively. Both sensor types
had to be integrated onto an RF antenna structure.
The SAWAFE hardware has been designed as an
exterior panel with embedded sensors and an internal
avionics box for running the experiments, collecting
data, and working as an interface with the spacecraft
computer. The primary objective of these experiments
has been to demonstrate the functional operation and
space survivability of the laser, RF and X-ray sensors
being integrated. The design objectives of the panel were
to be a structural, load-bearing member of the host
spacecraft, to have the various sensors mounted in a
realistic con® guration and to have minimal impact on
the spacecraft thermal or mass balance properties. The
panel has been built to consist of a layer of Lockheed
high thermal performance (HTP) insulation, composite
® bres, and a ceramic insulation material based on the
tiles used for the space shuttle transportation system.
The substrate is mounted on an aluminium plate
including RTV adhesives and a layer of NOMEX. The
di€ erent sensors are all contained on the panel’s surface
 1348
being well integrated into the HTP insulation material.
Because of the limitations in space, some of the laser
sensors had to be placed between the arms of the
spiral RF-antenna. The ® bre optic sensors were selected
to be several metres (scintillating ® bre) to ¹100 m
(darkening ® bre). The mechanical design of the avionics
system has been based on a `rack’ architecture and has
been positioned inside the spacecraft.
10. Conclusion
The ¯ eet of ageing aircraft is increasing continuously.
Some of the reasons for this are the signi® cant improve-
ments achieved in fatigue design of aircraft structures
during the past decades or the signi® cant increase in
aircraft operational cost combined with a general
decrease in transportatio n cost. This latter gap has
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forced operators to ® nd ways to extend their aircrafts’
operational life and thus reduce their average deprecia-
tion cost.
The improvements achieved in sensor technology,
signal processing and electronics as well as composite
materials, and the generally decreasing cost being
related to all these devices and techniques, has opened
a wide ® eld of research, allowing structure-integrate d
sensing to become more likely than it used to be
¹10 years before. The introduction of such a structure
integrated sensing for damage monitoring starts with a
new design principle, which is to make NDT an integral
part of the structural material. Realization of such a
design principle leads to a decrease in manpower related
inspection e€ ort and inspection becoming possible at
any arbitrary incident.
From the various NDT techniques being available,
those with a de® ned actuator input, e.g. acousto-ultra-
sonics or lamb waves, are proposed to be the most pro-
mising. This is mainly due to the fact that a de® ned
signal can be sent into the structure at any time and
the sensing signal is not dependent on the incident of
damage to occur (e.g. impact load, cracking of the
material, etc.). Regarding the sensors to be used, piezo-
electric devices as well as optical ® bres are those with the
highest potential. Their use has to be decided according
to their speci® c advantages and disadvantage s as well as
the speci® c application and needs. Signi® cant improve-
ments in signal processing and computation technology
in general have made the use of arti® cial neural net-
works feasible, which allow the determination of char-
acteristic novelty features in a structure resulting from
progressing damage. A description of normality can be
established for a speci® c (e.g. an undamaged ) condition,
and tests are then performed on a regular basis for
detecting abnormality or novelty. This switch between
normality and abnormality can make interpretation of
the relative complex signals easy to maintenance per-
C. Boller
sonnel. Another promising area is the use of genetic
algorithms, which allows the determination of the
optimal number and location of sensors for damage
location.
All these techniques are actually veri® ed with success
in various laboratory experiments and are on the way to
be proven in more complex aerospace structures.
Beyond this there are further ideas emerging, e.g.
remote sensing using smart antennas or sensory skins
which will enhance multifunctionality in future struc-
tural components.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the support of
Mr Christian Biemans from DaimlerChrysler Research
and Technology Exchange Group Stuttgart/ Germany
and Dr Wieslaw Staszewski from the Dynamics Group
of She eld University/ UK for their support regarding
testing and signal processing as well as the European
Commission for funding some of the work under the
MONITOR project within the BRITE/ EURAM pro-
gramme.
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