Health monitoring to detect pre-fault conditions for integrated electrical power - carbon fibre composite structure systems

该博士将开发集成电源和碳纤维的健康监测方法，在电气故障发生之前，能够早期检测和定位这些集成系统的退化，从而大大减少飞行期间的电气故障数量。因此，这将实现真正有弹性的集成系统设计，减少电气故障后的飞行小时数和昂贵的非计划维修时间。这项研究直接支持未来飞机和发动机上弹性集成系统的设计和实施，支持电气化和轻量化议程，这是飞行脱碳的关键推动因素。一个特别的挑战是航空电力系统必须在高振动、极端温度和低大气压力的危险环境中运行。这些都有助于系统退化，并最终导致电气故障。在电气故障可能发生之前，能够在早期阶段检测和定位这种劣化将是非常有利的。这需要设计和实施适当的健康监测方法，这是这个博士的重点。因此，博士将开辟一个新的研究领域，从正在进行的综合电力和复合材料结构设计的故障诊断和保护研究分支到这些系统的健康监测和故障诊断。该项目将首先了解集成电气CFRP系统从健康系统到故障系统的退化过程。其次，该项目将利用这些退化过程和行为的信息来确定退化检测的阈值，并将其转化为电力系统，CFRP铺设和集成系统设计决策。

This PhD will develop methods for health monitoring of integrated electrical power and carbon fibre, enabling the early stage detection and location of degradation in these integrated systems, before an electrical fault develops, thus significantly reducing the number of electrical faults during flight. Hence this will enable truly resilient, integrated systems design, reducing flight hours in post-electrical fault conditions and costly, unscheduled time out of service for maintenance. This research directly supports the design and implementation of resilient integrated systems on future aircraft and engines, supporting both electrification and lightweight agendas which are critical enablers for decarbonisation of flight.A particular challenge is the hazardous environment that the aero-electrical power system must operate in, with high levels of vibration, extreme temperature and low atmospheric pressure. These all contribute to system degradation, and ultimately electrical faults. It would be highly advantageous to be able to detect and locate this degradation at an early stage, before an electrical fault can occur. This requires the design and implementation of appropriate heath monitoring approaches, and is a key focus of this PhD. Hence the PhD will open up a new area of research, branching out from ongoing research on fault diagnostics and protection for integrated electrical power and composite structure design, into health monitoring and prognostics for these systems.For the successful development of a health monitoring method for an integrated electrical power and CFRP structural system, the project will first understand the degradation process of the integrated electrical CFRP system from a healthy system to a faulted system. Second, the project will utilise this information on degradation processes and behaviours to identify thresholds for degradation detection and translate these to electrical power system, CFRP layup and integrated systems design decisions.