Hypervelocity Impact Detection, Location, and Assessment for Thermal Protection Systems

A system is proposed that can track the AE and RF energy dispersion that is created when a vehicle is impacted by a projectile at hyper velocity. This same device can measure the time of arrival of the wave front at transducers placed throughout the vehicle. Using the known velocity of the energy in the skin of the vehicle, the system can calculate the exact point of impact. Furthermore, Phase I testing has shown that the energy measured by sensors on the structure can accurately provide a binary answer of whether the structure has been breached or not. The measurement of a second parameter can help to eliminate false positives and maximize system reliability. The sensors for this system can be mounted on either the inside or the outside of the structure. This significantly increases the flexibility of integrating the system with host vehicles.