Digital Twin Companion

Too often, cracks are discovered on in-service military aircraft in areas not expected to be under high-stress. Typically, these cracks coincide with pilot descriptions of “noises” in operation indicating the presence of buffeting, or an aerodynamically-coupled resonant vibration load. Since these types of cracks do not frequently present in the same place, that indicates a combination of factors contribute to these flaw, which could range from environmental (temperature, pressure) to pilot loads (maneuver stress/strain) and even maintenance errors (parts out of tolerance, loose fasteners or incomplete seals). The technology developed under this effort addresses the problem of buffeting-related damage by developing a distributed sensor network that can isolate buffeting locations and identify root cause and potential mitigation strategies prior to damage developing. This capability will reduce duration of preventative maintenance for some schedule cycles, and avert unscheduled maintenance. The proposed solution will pair a distributed system-on-a-chip data acquisition infrastructure with a custom-designed sensor package that includes an accelerometer, temperature and pressure elements, and a triaxial strain gauge with built-in static memory. The battery-powered system will be able to be daisy-chained on a single twisted-pair bus, and in-flight data will be synchronized collected with time stamps and stored for post-flight analysis.