Structural dynamic health monitoring of adaptive CFRP structures

The DLR Institute of Structural Mechanics is engaged in the construction and optimization of adaptive structures for aerospace and terrestrial applications. Due to the FFS- Project, one of the recent works of the Institute is the reduction of buffet induced vibration loads at a fin. The construction of modern aircrafts is influenced b the increasing use of fiber composites. They have more specific stiffness and strength properties than metals. On the other hand the layered structure leads to new kinds of damages like delaminations. In the fin interface there are actuators and sensors integrated. Therefore the fin is connected with a controller. For the extension of this adaptive system towards an on-line tool for health monitoring this controller can be used as an identifier of the structure's modal parameters. The most promising procedure is based on MX filters. These filters constitute the filter coefficients from which a fast transformation procedure extracts the modal parameters. The changes of these parameters are related to the location and extent of the damage. So when using the already integrate controller for system identification, one can have a low-cost on-line damage detection for dynamic adaptive structures. First off-line test at CFRP plates have shown the ability to detect delaminations.