Development of a Multi-Functional Installed Ultrasonic System for Detection of Pitting Corrosion and Bolt Loosening on Aerospace Vehicles

This paper presents an innovative new Pitting Corrosion Sensor Tracker (PCST) system for the detection and monitoring of pitting corrosion, bolt preload, and clamping force changes in critical areas of the rotorcraft structure. The system utilizes small integrated ultrasonic sensor networks that can be installed on complex rotorcraft structures for monitoring of pitting corrosion and clamping force combined with miniaturized sensors installed on the fasteners to monitor the preload forces. By combining these two sensor technologies together and analyzing the data they provide using sophisticated waveform and information extraction algorithms, the PCST system becomes a complete technology solution for the monitoring of component mounting areas. Acellent Technologies in partnership with NAVAIR has tested the proposed PCST system on rotorcraft components under real corrosion conditions. The methodology and results of the corrosion testing will be discussed in the paper. doi: 10.12783/SHM2015/98