Mechanical Tests Applied to Structural Health Monitoring: An Overview of Previous Experience

Laboratory for Materials Strength Testing (LMST) has been conducting accredited mechanical research for aviation from 2003. Among accredited procedures are e.g. low and high cycle fatigue tests, fracture toughness tests and fatigue crack growth rate tests. The main goal of them is obtaining materials constants and characteristics. However knowledge how to conduct these tests could be used also in other applications, for instance in the work on development of Structural Health Monitoring systems (SHM). When cracks propagate in a controlled way in laboratory conditions, it allows verifying the operation of a single sensor or a network of sensors.

In this paper, an overview of mechanical tests carried out at the Laboratory for Materials Strength Testing within Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) work on research and development of SHM systems is presented. Specimens prepared from materials such as aluminum alloys (among other withdrawn PZL-130 Orlik TC-II aircraft) and CFRP composite were tested under different mechanical loads, i.e., cycle and impact loads. In the presented research, both constant amplitude and spectrum loads were applied.