I-Corps: Wavenumber Spiral Frequency-Steerable Acoustic Transducer for Structural Health Monitoring

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is related to reductions in inspection and maintenance costs of commercial and military aircraft. As the average age of existing aircraft is extending beyond the design life, fatigue cracks are a major issue that requires close monitoring to ensure continued airworthiness. Extensive and time consuming manual non-destructive inspection programs have been implemented to monitor and insure the safety and structural integrity of the aircraft. The Wavenumber Spiral Frequency-Steerable Acoustic Transducer (WS-FSAT) is a Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) sensor that enables inspection of in hard-to-reach areas within an aircraft or other asset, where significant structural risk is present, and promises to enable remote inspection of critical structures without disassembly. The technology has the advantage of inherent directional sensing capabilities over relatively wide areas, which translates to lower size, weight and installation costs. Potential benefits include the reduction of the time and cost of inspections, and of the associated aircraft downtime, and of structural integrity risks through more frequent monitoring of structural risk areas. The proposed I-Corp program explores implementation and commercialization opportunities of the technology within the aerospace industry and its broader applicability for inspection and monitoring of structural components.This I-Corps project explores application and market opportunities for the Wavenumber Spiral Frequency-Steerable Acoustic Transducer (WS-FSAT). The WS-FSAT is a novel ultrasonic transducer that enables in-situ, nondestructive inspection of aircraft structures to detect defects that impact structural integrity and safety. WS-FSATs have inherent directional capabilities with the ability to detect, locate and characterize structural defects with significantly lower hardware and signal processing complexity than other approaches. The WS-FSAT maps the direction of wave sensing to a specific frequency component in the spectrum of the received signal, which greatly facilitates the identification and localization of damage. These directional capabilities rely on the design of the electrodes on a sensing substrate that performs the transduction of mechanical strains associated with waves propagating in the structure to an electrical signal. Such design process is at the core of the technology, and is suitable to meet the needs of inspection of complex structural components.