Structural Event and Damage Diagnosis in a Composite Fuselage Structure

Nowadays the composite material is becoming essential for aerospace structures due to the weight reduction. The lightweight composite structures bring with some problems like accidental damage. The support of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems in overall Structural Integrity (SI) management in those cases is in continuous growth. Airbus Defence and Space is developing a SHM System able to diagnose acci-dental events/damages during aircraft operation to provide additional information for maintenance program application. In this paper it is presented the evaluation of this SHM system for a composite fuselage cockpit structure in the diagnosis of mechanical impacts (events) and resulting damages. The system has been applied to composite complex and large structure using the background knowledge of previous studies on composite reinforced flat panels. An analytic elastic wave propagation 2D/3D model for composite material structures supports the event and damage diagnosis. The results indicate the particularities of SHM diagnosis for events and damages in a real composite structure.