Novel Approach of Structure Health Monitoring in Winged Unmanned Ariel Vehicle

Motivation
Structure Health monitoring (SHM) are widely used in various sectors such as aerospace, automotive and wind energy to monitor the strain within the composite component. Global increase of demand, particularly for fibre reinforced plastic (FRP) composites, unavoidably lead to high volumes of manufacturing and high rate of failure due to defect. In addition, most common aircraft crashes were caused by undetected defect in materials during manufacturing, hence, monitoring structural strain during flight will reduce failure rate and save passenger lives. SHM is an online system that help the Ground Control Station (GCS) to monitor and evaluate structural strain in test flight that often FEA/CFD simulations are not able to provide correct values.

Problem
Currently, there is a lack of standard in manufacturing UAV in Europe, many companies are struggling to sell their products due to cost effective UAV in far-east Asia (China, South Korea and Japan) and US manufactures. There is less synergy between pilots and manufactures of airplane in Europe that often leads to misunderstanding the Flight Management Control (FMC) that is deployed in aircraft. There is no pilot input in the early design stage of aircraft that she/he flies. Many aircrafts in Europe faces harsh environment such heavy rain, gusty wind and freezing temperature that makes in particular UAV difficult to fly. Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) is good example of such tools in Boeing 737 Max were not helpful to the pilot. Moreover, flying winged UAV is often an obstacle due to its light weight and aerodynamically unstable in bad weather. Often, simulation software package such as Ansys Fluent and Siemens NX (Simcenter Star-CCM plus) does not provide accurate outcomes of stress/strain profile due to material properties discrepancies and misalignment of the boundary conditions. Often, aerospace industries are complaining about their supply chains to the lack of the product repeatability and quality variances.

Solution
Winged Automatous Vehicle become a vital tool in surveillance to protect Europe Border. That requires a fleet of UAV that have certain standard and repeatability in production. The lightweight potential of Anisogrid for space applications has already been demonstrated by numerous rocket components (e.g. on Proton) and large Russian civil airplanes. While continuing research on the application of Anisogrid in space applications, our current focus is to adapt standard structure to Winged Unmanned Ariel Vehicle (WAVE). The designs must be adapted to the different strains experienced during the various flight manoeuvres. Knowledge about the durability of these types of structures must be built. Also, adequate stress/strain live data and aerodynamics stability criteria must be developed. The research proposal suggests embedding Fibre Bragg Grating Sensors (FBG) in the structure of Winged Unmanned Ariel VehiclE (WAVE) that made from anisogrid structure.

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