Health monitoring of the aircraft structure during a full scale fatigue test with use of an active piezoelectric sensor network

The paper presents an approach to develop a system for fatigue crack growth monitoring and early damage detection in the PZL – 130 ORLIK TC II turbo-prop military trainer aircraft structure. The system functioning is based on elastic waves propagation excited in the structure by piezoelectric PZT transducers. In the paper, a built block approach for the system design, signal processing as well as damage detection is presented. Description of damage detection capabilities are delivered in the paper and some issues concerning the proposed signal processing methods and their application to crack growth estimation models are discussed. Selected preliminary results obtained during the Full Scale Fatigue Test thus far are also presented. © (2015) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.