A UAS Testbed for the Flight Demonstration of Structural Health Monitoring Systems

The transition of airframe diagnostic technologies onto manned air vehicles is a complex process, with a timeline based on technological push, operator requirements and trust. The timeline includes stages for system development, validation, certification and implementation. The application of airframe diagnostic technologies on unmanned air vehicles offers a simpler route, which can expedite the development and validation cycles, and demonstrate the efficacy of the technologies hence building operator trust. With these benefits in mind, DST Group is developing an airframe sensor testbed upon which various airframe diagnostic systems (such as those used for structural health monitoring including optical fibre and acousto-ultrasonic based approaches) can be tested and have their usefulness verified. For initial demonstrations the testbed, based on a commercial-off-the-shelf hexacopter, was flown tethered in a laboratory setting. This paper presents results of the initial flight demonstration focusing on optical fibre measurements, in particular strain measurements with draw-tower fibre Bragg gratings.