Detection, Discrimination and Real-Time Tracking of Cracks in Rotating Disks

This SBIR proposes the development of a real-time system to detect, discriminate and track in real-time the growth of low cycle fatigue cracks in rotating disks. The goals of the SBIR are to develop:1. A crack detection system that is not associated solely with a change in the center of mass. 2. A system that can be licensed to general industry for use in spin pits, jet engines, steam turbines, medical centrifuges, flywheels or any other high speed turbomachinery, 3. A system that can discriminate between cracks and other effects that give potentially false readings. 4. A system that can be physically integrated with other sensors and the data easily correlated with readings from cooperating probes to provide a high confidence in the information to support a directed action by a health monitoring reasoner.The Phase I effort will focus on defining the method and demonstrating the feasibility of the system to detect and track cracks in rotating hardware. Phase II will refine the method, provide crack discrimination capability, characterize the method across a variety of disk types, and integrate the method into a commercial rotor health monitoring system. Phase III will commercialize the system.