Embedded blade microsystem and events recorder for drone structural health monitoring

Structural health monitoring is today growing challenge. A good health structure allows to assure in real-time a good performance level, to keep a high level of safety and to plan maintenance. Why drone applications? Drones are very expansive aircrafts, also referred to as UVA (unmanned air vehicle), exposed to a harsh environment due to their frequent military usage. In this context, propellers are among the key components worth health monitoring. The purpose of our research is to develop for the drone propeller an integrated electronics combining accelerometers and signal processing, able to record damaging events for the drone: shocks, vibrations or overspeeds whereas strain gauges could not analyze all these criteria. These parameters allow concluding whether the blade is damaged or not. This paper will present our embedded microsystem on drone propellers. Then we will show through real experiments how it is possible to monitor and detect events like stone shocks, propeller overspeeds or too strong vibrations. Specific algorithm for diagnosis will be discussed and evaluated in different environment tests conditions. Moreover the use of a wireless synchronization between several propellers will be studied too.