Federal Aviation Administration’s Probability of Detection Testing Results for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM)

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been participating with the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Aerospace Industry Steering Committee (AISC) to develop a methodology for calculating the Probability of Detection (POD) for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) for damage detection on commercial aviation. Two POD methodologies were developed: one by Dr. William Meeker, Iowa State University, and the other by Dennis Roach, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL). With Dr. Seth Kessler, Metis Design Corp, a test program of 24 samples of aluminum strips to be fatigued on MTS machines was developed. The samples were designed to meet the ASTM E647. Twelve samples had two SHM modalities on the front and back from Metis (PZT and carbon nanotubes), and the other twelve had SHM sensors from Structural Monitoring Systems (SMS) (comparative vacuum monitoring – CVM) and Acellent Technologies (PZT). The tests were performed at the FAA William J Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, NJ. The samples were cycled every 1500 cycles and then stopped for SHM data collection. Once the crack exceeded 0.125 inches and provided for a minimum of 15 inspections, a new sample was tested until all 12 samples were completed. The data was provided to each company to be set up in the format needed to run through the POD methodologies. Then the data was provided to Dr. Meeker and Dr. Roach for analysis. This paper will provide the results of those tests.