Numerical Modal Analysis for Damage Detection in Airplane Wings

Francisco de Assis Lopes Angelo¹; Reyolando Manoel Lopes Rebello da Fonseca Brasil¹

¹ UFABC - Federal University of ABC

doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-1945

Resumo

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has become an essential technique in Aerospace industry. The duration of service lives of such vehicles can be considerably extended by systematic monitoring of small, possibly undetected, damages to their structures. In this paper, we propose damage detection in airplane wings via modal analysis. We use Finite Element modeling as a first step in this direction. We make comparisons between undamaged wing models and models in which we deliberately introduce damage. We adopt an available real wing solid FE elements model and determine its free vibrations frequencies and modes for the undamaged situation. Next, we introduce holes in several places in the wing and new modal analyses are performed. The modal analysis shows that the free vibrations frequencies of a damaged wing are less than those of an undamaged one. We conclude that the damage, depending on its level, results in a considerable change in the free vibrations frequencies. We also tested some tentative numerical indicators of damage based on modal analysis.

Palavras-chave: Aerospace structures; Damage detection; Modal analysis