A Cross-parallel GW Sensor Network for Aircraft Smart Skin of Structural Health Monitoring

To implement guided wave (GW)-based aircraft structural health monitoring (SHM), a large number of GW sensors, as well as lead wires, need to be integrated with structures, which adds significant weight and requires the monitoring systems to support a lot of monitoring channels. To solve this problem, a cross-parallel GW sensor network was proposed, as well as its impact and damage monitoring method. The upper electrodes of GW sensors in the same row are connected to one wire, and the lower electrodes of GW sensors in the same column are connected to one wire. Thus, only $M+N$ lead wires are required to support an $M \times N$ cross-parallel GW sensor network to work. For demonstration and verification, a $7 \times 7$ cross-parallel GW sensor network is manufactured and integrated with a glass fiber reinforced plate by a conformal coupling process. Experimental results show that the cross-parallel GW sensor network successfully localized the impact and damage sub-regions. This is of great significance for the realization of lightweight and large-area aircraft SHM smart skin.