Fastener Inspection Development for Structural Health Monitoring of Responsive Space Satellites

New research initiatives are being dedicated to the task of developing the procedures and technologies necessary to apply structural health monitoring methods to space structures for pre-launch assessment for the goal of truncating assembly, integration and testing times from months to days. One of the most time consuming tasks is structural flight qualification testing. Traditionally, this testing provides an excellent stress test for the structure but, in addition to being lengthy, it has poor localization of abnormalities. The most common sources for structural inadequacy develop at fastener interfaces, such as bolted connections. To manage these issues, structural health monitoring is being considered as a means of locating potential problems and to verify the structure through self-diagnostic techniques during assembly intervals. It is envisioned that this option could allow traditional tests to be omitted or significantly reduced. Piezoelectric wafer active sensors are utilized on a satellite panel where off-nominal clamping force is simulated by insufficiently loaded bolts. The method is also inspected for reliability, limitations, and hardware requirements to validate the techniques capability. Preliminary experimental results show that loose bolts can be detected and localized.

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