Structural Health Monitoring of Submersible Navy Composites

The use of composite materials in Naval structures continues to expand as the materials systems along with their engineering design and analysis capabilities advance. To that end, it is becoming paramount that real-time assessments be made of these materials while they are in-service to ensure decreased life-cycle costs and allow the designers to fully realize the benefits of these material systems. The Phase II effort leverages the technology developed, and the lessons learned from Phase I, to demonstrate a fully functional Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system that is capable of detecting, characterizing and assessing the damage in submersible composite components. The primary efforts include: final correlation between sensor reading and damage levels, development of material models for various types of loading with the SHM, and final development and demonstration of the SHM software and hardware in a multiple mid-scale tests. The loading types considered in these mid-scale demonstrations will include impact, fatigue and transient shock. The Phase II will culminate in a final demonstration of the complete SHM system on a representative Naval non-pressure hull composite structure under both mechanical and UNDEX loading.