Miniature Corrosion Sensor Hub to Monitor Difficult-to-Access Aircraft Structure with Complex Geometry.

Embedded wireless sensors for corrosion monitoring of critical aircraft components are needed for improved condition based maintenance and future structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. The objective of this Phase I SBIR proposal is to design, develop, and test a corrosion measurement and data collection system that can utilize multiple types of corrosion sensors. A key design criterion is that the system be extremely low power which will enable its use with energy scavenging power sources, such as vibration based energy harvesters. The basic architecture incorporates a hub which manages data collection and storage from multiple distributed remote corrosions sensing nodes (CSN’s). Communication between the hub and the CSN’s is achieved using a micro power variation of the RS-485 bus architecture, which allows for up to 256 distributed nodes. The hub incorporates high density non-volatile flash memory for data storage and utilizes an IEEE802.15.4 radio link for offloading the collected data to a remote handheld or personal computer. The CSN’s can employ any type or corrosion sensing method, including resistive, electrochemical impedance spectroscopic (EIS), and inductive techniques. Future distributed nodes could be developed that support various other structural sensors, including strain, pressure, and vibration sensors.