Energy harvesting solutions for tracking flight times in aviation and missile structures

Structural components on aviation platforms, including launcher airframes, launch rails, and missile structures, amongst others, have limited lifetime and require maintenance and/or replacement at certain intervals. These structures are typically fabricated from metallic or fiber-reinforced composites. These structures are also critical components of both current and future systems. Due to the critical nature of their function, as well as the cost associated with repair, maintenance, and replacement, there exists a need to provide a visual indication of the overall flight time that these structures have experienced, allowing maintenance personnel to track the life of the structure and to assess the need for repair or replacement. Wired or embedded sensors are conventional approaches that could be applied to tracking flight time. However, these solutions must be powered by external sources such as from the launcher itself or from batteries, which add weight and size. This SBIR effort proposes the development of a small energy harvesting captive carry monitoring device that would record the amount of time and vibration that a payload has experienced flying on the helicopter and perform this function in a self-contained unit that is completely powered by wasted energy on the structure. The Phase I effort will investigate