Engineers at BAE Systems are working on providing aircraft human-like ‘skin’ to help detect injury or damage.
The ‘smart skin’ concept which could be embedded with tens of thousands of micro-sensors will help ‘feel’ the world around. When applied to an aircraft, this will enable it to sense wind speed, temperature, physical strain and movement, far more accurately than current sensor technology allows.
Once the concept is adopted, the efficiency of aircraft maintenance would increase. Also, safety of aircraft will increase many folds as the ‘smart skin’ concept will enable aircraft to continually monitor their health, reporting back on potential problems before they become significant.
The tiny sensors or ‘motes’ can be as small as grains of rice and even as small as dust particles at less than 1mm squared. Collectively, the sensors would have their own power source and when paired with the appropriate software, be able to communicate in much the same way that human skin sends signals to the brain. The sensors are so small that BAE
Systems is exploring the possibility of retrofitting them to existing aircraft and even spraying them on like paint.
Leading the research and development is Senior Research Scientist Lydia Hyde whose ‘eureka’ moment came when she was doing her washing and observed that her tumble dryer uses a sensor to prevent it from overheating.
Lydia said: “Observing how a simple sensor can be used to stop a domestic appliance overheating, got me thinking about how this could be applied to my work and how we could replace bulky, expensive sensors with cheap, miniature, multi-functional ones. This in turn led to the idea that aircraft, or indeed cars and ships, could be covered by thousands of these motes creating a ‘smart skin’ that can sense the world around them and monitor their condition by detecting stress, heat or damage. The idea is to make platforms ‘feel’ using a skin of sensors in the same way humans or animals do.
This research is part of a range of new systems being investigated by BAE Systems under a major programme exploring next-generation technology for air platforms.