Design, Development, and Assembly of Space Flight Structural Health Monitoring Experiment

The paper presents the design, development, and assembly of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) experiments intended to be launch in space on a sub-orbital rocket flight as well as a high altitude balloon flight. The experiments designed investigate the use of both piezoelectric sensing hardware in a wave propagation experiment and piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) in an electromechanical impedance experiment as active elements of spacecraft SHM systems. The list of PWAS experiments includes a bolted-joint test and an experiment to monitor PWAS condition during spaceflight. Electromechanical impedances of piezoelectric sensors will be recorded in-flight at varying input frequencies using an onboard data acquisition system. The wave propagation experiment will utilize the sensing hardware of the Metis Design MD7 Digital SHM system. The payload will employ a triggering system that will begin experiment data acquisition upon sufficient saturation of g-loading. The experiment designs must be able to withstand the harsh environment of space, intense vibrations from the rocket launch, and large shock loading upon re-entry. The paper discusses issues encountered during design, development, and assembly of the payload and aspects central to successful demonstration of the SHM system during both the sub-orbital space flight and balloon launch.