Structural Health Monitoring of Space Vehicle Thermal Protection Systems

Abstract:

The thermal protection systems of spacecraft are vulnerable to damage from impacts by foreign objects moving at high velocities. This paper describes a proposed novel structural health monitoring system that will detect, locate and evaluate the damage resulting from such impacts. This system consists of a network of intelligent local agents, each of which controls a network of piezoelectric acoustic emission sensors to detect and locate an impact, and a network of optical fibre Bragg grating sensors to evaluate the effect of the impact damage by means of a thermographic technique. The paper concentrates on two issues that are critical to the successful implementation of the proposed SHM system: measurement of the elastic properties of the thermal protection material, knowledge of which is essential to the design and operation of the acoustic emission sensor network; and investigation of the practical feasibility of a switched network of optical fibre sensors.

• Periodical: Key Engineering Materials (Volume 558)
• Pages: 268-280
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.558.268
• Online since: June 2013
• Authors: Nigel Hoschke, Don C. Price, D. Andrew Scott, W. Lance Richards
• Keywords: Acoustic Emission (AE), Impact Damage, Multi-Agent System (MAS), Optical Fiber Sensor (OFS), Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), Switched Optical Fibre Network, Thermal Protection System

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