|
4.1. Structural Health Monitoring
HUMS and ULTRAHUMS (Health Usage and Monitoring Systems) are integrated items used for health monitoring and failure prediction of equipment, systems and platform structures. Current first and second generation HUMS are principally applied to rotary wing vehicles. Future systems will be developed for all airborne platforms, and also for their associated ground based facilities.
The trend will be for greater sophistication and greater integration, with inputs from all sub‑components of the avionics and flight systems. MNT/MEMS sensors will play a major role in third and higher generation systems. Both weight, interconnectivity and individual sensor cost will be major drivers. The following table summarizes the current use and R&D in sensors and actuators for structure monitoring. Therefrom, the best prospects for MNT based sensors seem to lie in the aerodynamic control rather than in the structural health monitoring itself, as already observed in section 2.
|
|
|
