Aircraft health and usage monitoring system for in-flight strain measurement of a wing structure

Abstract

This paper presents an aircraft health and usage monitoring system (HUMS) using fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors. This study aims to implement and evaluate the HUMS for in-flight strain monitoring of aircraft structures. An optical-fiber-based HUMS was developed and applied to an ultralight aircraft that has a rectangular wing shape with a strut-braced configuration. FBG sensor arrays were embedded into the wing structure during the manufacturing process for effective sensor implementation. Ground and flight tests were conducted to verify the integrity and availability of the installed FBG sensors and HUMS devices. A total of 74 flight tests were conducted using the HUMS implemented testbed aircraft, considering various maneuvers and abnormal conditions. The flight test results revealed that the FBG-based HUMS was successfully implemented on the testbed aircraft and operated normally under the actual flight test environments as well as providing reliable in-flight strain data from the FBG sensors over a long period of time.