Structural Health Monitoring for Bell 407 Tail Boom

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of aerospace structures has received significant interest as a core component of Condition Based Maintenance (CBM). An Acousto-Ultrasonic method based on high frequency structural vibrations using piezoelectric transducers has been developed to perform damage detection on metallic and composite aerospace structures. Tests were performed on laboratory specimens to evaluate the sensitivity of crack detection and ballistic damage using this method. The Bell 407 tail boom structure was chosen to demonstrate the capability a system, designed to employ the developed method, to detect common structural damage related to fatigue cracking and battle damage.