ABSTRACT
One of the main sources of damage in aeronautical structures is the impact caused by e.g. debris or birds. This is particularly true for structures made of composite materials. The reconstruction of the impact energy and location is very important to develop a reliable structural health monitoring (SHM). The mathematical background of this problem is relatively simple, as a linear relationship can be established between the force applied by the impact and the signal collected by the sensors. The impact force and location can be obtained from sensors’ response by applying an inverse transform. However, the main disadvantage of this method is that it can be difficult to calculate the exact relationship G between force and signal, especially for complicated structures.This relationship can be evaluated analytically, using a Finite Element Method (FEM) approach or from experiments. One example is given in (Martin and Doyle 1996) where this inverse technique was applied to a beam case, knowing a priori the position of the load. However in real cases the position of the load is unknown so a straightforward method cannot be applied. One paper (Park et al. 2009), proposed a technique based on interpolating known Gs. An initial estimation of the impact location was made, which was then updated with a minimization problem.
