Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems in aircraft: wing damage detection employing guided waves techniques

The doctoral thesis provides a detailed description of the implementation of methodologies and technologies based on ultrasonic guided waves for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) on wing structural elements made of composite materials for BVID or hidden flaws detection. The developed methodologies have been first technologically integrated and applied on small scale structural elements, unstiffened and stiffened plates. Subsequently the SHM system was integrated on a full scale wing box demonstrator in order to perform the delamination detection. The implemented SHM system is capable to control a network of surface mounted piezoelectric transducers, to perform Electromechanical Impedance measurement at each transducer, to check the reliability as well as the bonding strength, and to perform an active guided wave screening.