Structural Health Monitoring: A Contribution to the Intelligent Aircraft Structure

Future aircrafts will be manufactured out of new and innovative materials and will be assembled by fast and economic assembling technologies. Nevertheless conventional materials will play a role in future design philosophies, as well. In order to take the benefit from all relevant material technologies and also new as- sembling technologies new innovative inspection and monitoring technologies need to be developed and implemented. Today's Non-Destructive Inspection (NDI) technologies are limited due to the in- spection can only be carried out if an access to the area to be inspected exits. Only during maintenance checks this can be ensured in most cases. So a continuous or more often inspection is not possible due to economic reasons. The uses of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) technologies for future aircraft will not only enable new possibilities for maintenance concepts, but will have a big in- fluence on design concepts and assembling technologies. SHM is aimed to be one of the key technologies to control the structural integrity in future aircrafts providing both maintenance and weight saving benefits.