PEER Seminar Series, May 19, 2017: Structural Health Monitoring of Composite Structures: Application to Aeronautic Nacelles

Nacelle of an A380

Nacelle of an A380

Date: Friday, May 19, 2017
Time: 11am (sharp) – noon
Location: 502 Davis Hall, UC Berkeley

Watch the video of this presentation.

The ability to monitor autonomously the health of complex structures such as aeronautic or civil engineering structures in real-time is becoming increasingly important. This process, referred to as structural health monitoring (SHM), relies on onboard platforms comprising sensors, actuators, computational units, and communication resources. The SHM process is typically divided into four steps: damage detection, damage localization, damage classification and damage quantification.

This talk will focus on Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems for complex composite structures with an application to elements of aeronautical nacelles. The main parts of the nacelle concerned with the proposed approach are the fan cowl (composite monolithic) and the inner fixed structure (IFS, sandwich structure with honeycomb core) of the thrust reverser. These structures made from composite materials are subjected to many types of damage which can reduce the useful life of a nacelle (fiber breaking, delamination, crack, etc.). Furthermore, these structures are exposed to many environmental constraints such as changing thermal variations (from -55°C to +120°C). The challenge addressed in this talk is to develop and validate a SHM system able to detect and localize these damages before the degradation of the whole structure occurs, and independently of the ambient temperature.

PRESENTERS:
Nazih Mechbal, Associate Professor, PIMM – ENSAM/CNRS/CNAM. Professor Mechbal is at the laboratory of Processes and Engineering in Mechanics and Materials (PIMM/UMR CNRS/CNAM) at the engineering school Arts et Métiers ParisTech (ENSAM) of Paris, where he is a member of the Dynamic, Systems and Control Group (DYSCO). He received his PhD degree in robotics from ENSAM in 1999. His research interests are in the development and application of theoretical methods of automatic control and signal processing to mechanical structures, and more specifically to smart structures which include structural control, structural health monitoring, diagnosis and robotics. He has conducted and coordinated several projects and PhD theses with industrial partners.

Marc Rébillat, Associate Professor, PIMM – ENSAM/CNRS/CNAM. Professor Rébillat was hired as an associate professor within the DYSCO team at PIMM in September 2012 after his PhD thesis was awarded the Rocard Prize from the French Acoustical Society (SFA). His research deals with the formalization of Parallel Hammerstein nonlinear models identification methods and of their use for structural health monitoring purposes, under the assumption that damages generate dynamical nonlinearities. He also has activities related to the dynamical behavior of large structures equipped with electrodynamical or piezo-electric transducers with applications to audio and ultrasonic acoustics.