Real Time Structural Health Monitoring of High Velocity Impact Events

This effort investigates two specific technologies to detect and monitor structural damage from high-energy impacts and blasts. The two technologies include directional transducers and structural retrofitting concepts. The directional transducers localize impacts, and enable subsequent in situ assessment of structural integrity while minimizing sensor count, electronics complexity, and signal processing requirements. The structural retrofitting concepts steer and dissipate blast and impact energy in order to enhance sensor survivability while providing a known transfer function that allows impact reconstruction from sampled wavefield data. Sensor interrogation electronics will be also be developed to wake-up and capture high-speed sensor data when necessary. The Phase II effort will include analysis, design, fabrication, and test activities to develop each of these system components. These activities first demonstrate a 1st generation, low velocity (500m/s) SHM system during year 1 and a 2nd generation high velocity (1km/s) system during year 2