Intelligent Shims for Aviation Systems

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Safety is paramount in aerospace industry. Shims play a critical role in joining components of the propulsion and airframe subsysterms. Instrumented (intelligent) shims can provide information about joint and component integrity, valuable insight that will help improve aircraft safety, increase their reliability, and reduce the operation costs. This project is part of an integrated development plan undertaken by Shimco to introduce Intelligent Shims (IntelliShim) to the aerospace market. These devices will integrate mechanical gap management, sensing, and energy harvesting into one component. The specific goal of this project is to develop shim-embedded sensors to serve the health monitoring needs of the aerospace market.Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are an ideal technology platform to meet this need. The fabrication technology is well developed, stable, and cheap. The goal of this project is to develop low-power piezoelectric and / or electrostatic shim-embedded MEMS force, moment, and temperature sensors that can be integrated into shims without undermining the joint mechanical integrity.