An External Store Carriage Life Assessment and Monitoring System

At present, aircraft external stores are designed for, and qualified to, a particular carriage life based in part on exposure to vibration and shock events. However, there currently is no acceptable method for tracking the exposure of individual stores to sustained vibration or other inertial events. The is a need for a device that can be integrated into external stores to monitor and track exposure of the store to vibration and mechanical shock events such as total time in steady or maneuvering flight, adjacent weapons firings, arrested landings, etc. Sporian proposes to develop a sensor that can measure accelerations of the store in three axes and automatically identify, categorize, and track exposure to inertial inputs of interest. The overall concept for the proposed system is based on an ultra-low power 3-axis accelerometer and novel signal conditioning circuitry plus wireless communications and energy harvesting technology to generate data that supports tracking of total carriage time plus other selected inertial events of interest. Phase I efforts will focus on defining the sensor and overall system requirements, evaluating competing sensor and system options, developing an initial design for the sensor, and prototyping and demonstrating critical aspects of the sensor in a laboratory environment.