Development of a Digital Twin to Improve Safety for Impact Sensitive Composite Aircraft Structures

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Modern civil and military airframes are built using an increasing quantity of tailored laminated materials to reduce weight and decrease life-cycle costs. However, these laminated polymer composite materials are particularly sensitive to in-service impact damage, post-impact damage growth from cyclic loading and environmental degradation. These types of structures thus require frequent non-destructive inspections, costly repairs and lower aircraft availability. The current approach to reducing this risk is to overdesign these structures with high safety factors or high load enhancement factors during testing - resulting in increased weight and lower structural efficiency. A new paradigm, the "digital twin" is required to monitor these structures from manufacturing through their entire life cycle.*** In this proposed DG Program, I will address this ongoing and costly challenge by developing a digital twin of impact sensitive composite structures using an integrated approach to the detection, identification, localization and monitoring of impact damage and post-impact damage growth in composite and hybrid aircraft structures. This digital twin will be a high fidelity virtual replica of the composite structure including all of the process indicted defects and residual stresses and then it will be updated in real time as the structure is subjected to service loads, hygrothermal aging and impact damage. The proposed research will be organised into three tasks:******Task 1 - Detection, Identification, Localization and Monitoring of Impact Damage (PhD-1 and MASc-1)***Task 2 - Development of a "Digital Twin" Framework for Impact Sensitive Structures (PhD-2 and PhD-3)***Task 3 - Digital Twin Demonstration for Composite Aircraft Structures (MASc-2 and MASc-3 with PhD-1 and PhD-2)****** Impact damage detection, impact modelling and environmental degradation of composites have been investigated individually for many decades. However, no one has yet connected the real world composite part with a high fidelity digital twin for the purposes of improving safety and performance. This proposed Program will make a novel contribution to support the safe introduction and operation of lightweight composite and hybrid structures in future aircraft. A total of 3 PhD and 3 MASc students will be supervised and trained on this Program in composites durability, manufacturing, structural health monitoring, and impact damage modelling. The proposed digital twin framework will be used by operators to determine which impact events must be dealt with immediately and those which do not pose a safety risk to the aircraft. The remaining useful life and effects of repairs and modifications for each individual aircraft will be available to fleet managers. This work will have a broader impact beyond the design of new aircraft and may also be beneficial for infrastructure and wind energy applications.