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As the UH-1 aircraft continue to age, there is growing concern for their structural integrity. With corrosion damage becoming a bigger part of the sustainment picture with increasing maintenance burden and cost, it is becoming increasingly important for corrosion management to be updated with more advanced techniques. The current find-and-fix technique for handling corrosion has many shortfalls, spurring the recent interest in early detection through structural health monitoring. This condition based technique is becoming more prevalent and is recognized for the potential to greatly reduce maintenance cost. Through corrosion monitoring, structural and environmental conditions can be closely observed, preventing excessive maintenance action and saving cost. Searches for corrosion monitoring system designs revealed several commercial companies with prototype systems installed on commercial aircraft, however, details on system design and data analysis were scarce. This study attempted to bridge the gap in literature by providing insight into the development of a corrosion damage prediction model and the design of a corrosion monitoring system. This study attempted to use aircraft maintenance data to make prediction models for determining what corrosion damage an aircraft can expect, given varying operating conditions. Although a reliable prediction model could not be created, trends observed in the data were still valuable for identifying problematic areas of the aircraft. In order to create reliable models, more accurate corrosion data is needed. This can be accomplished through the implementation of a corrosion monitoring system. A custom corrosion monitoring system was designed for the UH-1 aircraft. Commercial off-the-shelf products were fit to the design and a benefits-to-cost analysis was performed for the monitoring system, evaluating the system based on criteria developed from user requirements. The system proved to meet and exceed expectation, making it an ideal choice for the UH-1 aircraft.

M. Tech. Mechanical Engineering / The increased use of composite materials in different industries has led to the realization of some of its benefits and disadvantages. One of the major problems, however, is the availability of biaxial test data for different composite materials. This is because structures during application face multi-axial stress states examples of such stress state scenarios include wind turbine blades and pressure vessels. This has also led to diverse range of test methods and material compositions such as combining different fibbers. The material used in this work is polymer matrix honeycomb sandwich panels. Sandwich panels are fabricated by attaching two thin stiff skins of fiber glass or carbon fiber reinforced laminates to a lightweight core. This work addresses some of the major advantages and disadvantages of this testing method. The main objective of this study is to develop a repeatable, cost effective and time efficient method for multi-axial testing of sandwich panels using existing resources.

Thesis: M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1975 / Includes bibliographical references. / by Richard F. Harris. / M.S. / M.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Helicopter load histories applied to notched metal samples are taken as examples, and their fatigue lives are predicted by using a simplified version of the local strain approach. This simplified method requires an input load history in the form of the rain-flow matrix and places bounds on the fatigue life. A peak-valley reconstructed history is generated based on the standard spectrum Helix. A second history studied is a more irregular one based on actual flight data. lt is used to generate three reconstructed histories based on three principles: peak-valley, to-from, and rain-flow. Emphasis is given to the rain-flow reconstruction method, and different reconstruction methods based on rain-flow cycle counting are presented. Life predictions are presented for all of the above cases, and the comparison with test data and other considerations suggest that the most promising reconstruction approach is one based on rain-flow cycle counting. Finally, a method is presented which reconstructs a history with the same rain-flow cycles and also the same distribution of relative time increments between adjacent peaks and valleys. This reconstructed history gives the same fatigue life as the original history. / Ph. D.

The investigation contained herein is a part of a larger, long-term project: The Development of SMART Aircraft Bolts. Structural failures, at highly stressed components, arc common in some of the aircraft used by the South African Air force. The strength of one such component, the wing bolts on the C-130 aircraft, is analysed and compared to the stress distribution in a bolt which has a small hole drilled through the centre of the bolt (which will be used to insert a sensing device). The results of this analysis will be used as input into further phases of the project, e.g., SMART material selection and the development of sensing devices. Due to the complex physics of a bolted joint, advanced analysis of the bolt under conservative loading was performed, after conducting thorough research into bolted joint design and analysis methods, in order to provoke the final recommendations. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.

In the last two decades, the emphasis in aircraft maintenance has been on developing online structural health monitoring systems to replace conventional non destructive inspection techniques which require considerable down-time, human effort and cost. Vibration based damage detection is one of the most promising techniques for implementation in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). In vibration based methods, the presence of damage is detected by monitoring changes in one of the dynamic parameters of the structure, resonant frequencies, modeshapes or damping characteristics. Compared to modeshape based methods, frequency based methods have the advantage that measurements need to be taken only at a single location. Previous developments on frequency based techniques have relied on Finite Element Model updating; analytical techniques have hitherto been restricted to beams due to the complexity in developing equations for cracked two dimensional structures. In this thesis the analytical approach using an energy formulation is extended to plates with through-thickness cracks, where modeshapes from either numerical modelling or experimental measurements can be employed to determine the energy of vibration. It is demonstrated that by using a hybrid approach, incorporating experimentally measured modeshapes along with measured changes in frequencies, the damage parameters can be estimated without resorting to theoretical modelling or numerical analysis. The inverse problem of finding the crack location, size and orientation from measured changes in frequencies is addressed using minimisation techniques. The forward problem and the inverse algorithm is first validated using numerical simulation and experimental testing of beams with edge cracks and centre cracks. The application of the methodology to the two dimensional case is then validated by numerical simulation and experimental modal analysis of plates with through thickness cracks. A statistical procedure is developed for determination of the 90/95 probability of crack detection and the minimum detectable crack size in both cases. It is demonstrated that the measurement of frequency changes can be successfully employed to detect and assess the location and size of cracks in beams and plates, using modeshapes from theory, Finite Element Analysis.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Committee Chair: Michaels, Jennifer; Committee Member: Habetler, Thomas; Committee Member: Jacobs, Laurence; Committee Member: Michaels, Thomas; Committee Member: Vachtsevanos, George.