Localization of Hypervelocity Impact- Engendered Damage In Stiffened Curved Structures Using In-Situ Acoustic Emission

Abstract

Pervasive in Earth’ orbit, hypervelocity impact (HVI), caused by micrometeoroids and orbital debris (MMOD), poses an immense threat to the safety and integrity of spacecraft, leading to the failure and fragmentation of the entire spacecraft structures. Addressing such an issue, HVI-induced damage in space structures is localized using in-situ acoustic emission (AE). However, conventional AE localization techniques in the stiffened curved structures require either the knowledge of the direction dependent velocity profile or a dense array of sensors, due to the attenuation and anisotropic-like propagation of AE signals. In this work, a new approach of area localization is proposed to locate the HVI-induced acoustic source in large-scale anisotropic-like plates with a sparse array of sensors, and without knowing the direction dependent velocity profile in the plate. On this basis, the impact spot can be precisely located.