The research area is dedicated to the development, implementation and validation, both numerical and experimental, of advanced approaches for the modeling, monitoring and control of aircraft structures. The focus is on lightweight structures, made of multilayered composite and sandwich laminates, on the concept of smart structures, with embedded sensors and actuators, and on the structural health-state monitoring of the main aircraft components.
- Strain-based monitoring techniques for aircraft structures
The design of aircraft with an increasing use of multilayered composite and sandwich primary structures, the adoption of variable-geometry concepts, and the spread of unmanned solutions, make the adoption of rapid, effective and robust structural monitoring systems increasingly important. A key technology in this framework is “shape-sensing”, i.e., the reconstruction of the deformed configuration of a structure starting from some discrete strain measurements. The knowledge of the displacement field of the monitored structure, especially if applicable "on-line", is a primarily useful information, for example, to provide feedback to structural morphing control and load alleviation systems. From the displacement field it is then possible to evaluate the strain and stress state of the structure to determine, in real time, the onset of anomalies and the development of possible failures. Finally, shape-sensing can be an important ingredient of a "digital twin" representing the monitored aircraft.
The project aims to develop and validate, numerically and experimentally, shape-sensing techniques for monitoring aircraft structures. In particular, the focus shall be on:
- the specialization of the techniques to multilayered composite and sandwich structures;
- the further development of external loads reconstruction methods based on both the original measured strain data and on the reconstructed displacement field;
- the development of integrated approaches that combine the reconstructed stress distributions and fatigue life assessment methodologies.
- Modeling of multilayered composite and sandwich structures
The number of innovative materials available for the design of efficient aircraft structures (multilayered composite and sandwich, with layers enriched by functionally-graded approaches or nano-particles, with embedded or attached sensors and active materials) leads to the need of accurate but computationally affordable models for the analysis and design.
The project aims at developing and validating, numerically and experimentally, higher-order models for the analysis of multilayered structures with innovative materials. In particular, the focus shall be on:
- computationally affordable approaches, with a fixed number of unknowns, independent of the number of layers;
- the development of numerical solutions easy-to-implement into finite element commercial codes;
- the integration of the developed approaches with failure criteria, in order to create effective tools for the progressive failure analysis of multilayered structures.