Smart Environmental Corrosivity Sensor Suite for Aircraft Applications

Corrosion of aircraft is the single largest maintenance cost driver for the Navy and Marine Corps. In order to maximize aircraft availability, and minimize inspection and maintenance demands, Luna is developing a miniature, light weight sensor suite that will measure corrosive severity of aircraft operational environments. The smart sensor suite monitors multiple environmental parameters and cumulative corrosivity. The self contained, light weight, and small sized sensor suite permits instrumentation of critical components and “corrosion hotspots” within an aircraft. The sensor suite has been designed as a smart transducer interface module for compatibility with a network capable application processor, such as the miniature corrosion sensor hub (Topic N07-169). The sensor suite is a low power device for long life use with an energy scavenging and storage module (Topic N07-178). The environmental corrosivity sensor suite supports data fusion of environmental parameters, and corrosivity measurements for improved state awareness and reduced uncertainty in estimating coating system breakdown and structural damage. Luna concluded the Phase I effort with a demonstration of the breadboard prototype sensor suite in corrosion and environmental tests.