Acoustic Emission-Based Detection of Impacts on Thermoplastic Aircraft Control Surfaces: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

The reliability of aircraft control surfaces, constructed from thermoplastic materials, can be affected by impacts from airborne particles. Recognizing the exact position of such impacts is essential for correctly estimating the resulting damage. This research intended to address the issue by introducing an innovative structural health monitoring solution capable of autonomously detecting and localizing impacts using acoustic emission monitoring. The objective of this research is to investigate the application of AE for the localization of impacts on aircraft elevators using machine learning techniques, specifically regression algorithms. To achieve this goal, two algorithms, linear regression, and random forest, were employed for predicting the impact locations based on AE signals. The performance of each algorithm was validated on a thermoplastic composite aircraft elevator. Results indicated that both linear regression and random forest models show high accuracy in predicting the impact locations. The random forest model, with an R2 value of 0.98616 and an RMSE of 0.6778, outperformed the linear regression model, which exhibited an R2 value of 0.9361 and an RMSE of 1.4614.