Real-Time Maintenance Assessment Device and Post Data Analysis of Advanced Aircraft Coating and Composite Surface Integrity

The SBIR objective is to develop a system that not only measures an aircraft’s coating integrity but tracks that history for the purpose of historical spatial comparison and facilitate the prediction of future coating maintenance. Millennium Engineering and Integration proposes to integrate new miniaturized hardware and surface integrity tracking software with previously developed emissivity measurement technology to provide a hand held Coating Maintenance Assessment Device (CMAD) prototype to the Navy for evaluating large surface areas of an aircraft’s coating integrity in fleet environments. The emissivity measurement technology is unprecedented, and the concept was demonstrated in field trials using laboratory scale equipment. The most formidable challenge is to reduce the size and mass of the hardware by a factor of three while providing complete capability and robustness required in a user friendly fleet deployable device. The Coating Maintenance Tracking Software will receive and archive aircraft surface emissivity data recorded by CMAD and spatially transform this data into surface reference frames representative of each aircraft. This data base will enable tracking of emissivity degradation using the initial reference measurement with subsequent measurements showing a degradation trail and warnings to quantitatively indicate when coating maintenance is required. BENEFITS: An accurate, remote thermal measurement system is needed to accurately measure various products during manufacturing without touching/contaminating the product. Manufacturers of such products as steel, ceramics, glass and aluminum would greatly improve their production efficiency with CMAD technology. Airports can utilize CMAD’s accurate remote thermal measurement technology to quickly assess temperatures of individuals in a crowd to determine which ones may have severe flu symptoms. The food industry can utilize CMAD to detect spoiled food in storage, restaurants and during processing.