Abstract
Providing a reliable and universal Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system allowing for remote aircraft inspections and a reduction of maintenance costs is a major challenge confronting the aerospace industry today. SHM based on guided Lamb waves is one of the approaches capable of addressing the issue while satisfying all the associated requirements. This paper presents a holistic approach to the continuous real time damage growth monitoring and early damage detection in aircraft structure. The main component of the system is a piezoelectric transducers (PZT) network. It is complemented by other SHM methods: Comparative Vacuum Monitoring (CVMTM) and Resistance Gauges at selected aircraft hot spots. The paper offers the description of damage detection capabilities including the analysis of data collected from the PZL-130 Orlik aircraft full-scale fatigue test.