ELECTRO-MECHANICAL IMPEDANCE EXPERIMENT AND REAL-TIME DATA ACQUISITION FOR SUBORBITAL SPACEFLIGHT

Abstract

Reusable space vehicles nowadays are regularly used to ferry payloads to space. The structural health monitoring (SHM) systems could be used to further improve safety of the vehicle and reduce operational costs. This contribution describes design, development and implementation of a realtime data acquisition SHM experiment for suborbital spaceflight. The aim of suborbital experiment is to demonstrate successful collection, spatial distribution, on board processing and storage of environmental, structural (SHM) and flight data. In this contribution, details of payload design and operation are provided focusing on SHM application in space environment. Due to space and mass limitation of the payload, a SHM experiment was designed with minimum use of hardware and materials. A miniaturized Canary impedance measurement unit was developed to include the real-time data analysis and communication capabilities as well as a raw data storage on a SD card. A small cantilever beam with an attached piezoelectric sensor was selected as a structural specimen for the in-flight electro-mechanical impedance test. The specimen was modeled analytically and compared to experimental data obtained in laboratory tests. The systems’ ability to process impedance data in near-real time was also validated. The results demonstrate ability of the developed SHM system to acquire, store, analyze and communicate the electro-mechanical impedance information to enable a new generation of smart space structures.