10. Structural Health Monitoring of Aeroengines Using Transmissibility and Bond Graph Methodology

In recent years, due to increase in demand for structural safety in various engineering disciplines such as aerospace, researchers have focused on developing vibration-based methodologies for monitoring and detecting structural damage in various structures. Safety and performance of an aging structure is a prominent issue, occurring in aircraft, engines, and public infrastructures. There have been significant recent developments in the field of structural health monitoring (SHM) [1–9]. SHM provides a means to monitor structural safety in a continuous manner. The main objective of SHM can be defined as the assessment and monitoring of the structural safety and operational condition to detect any anticipated damage or faults that are beginning to occur or ones that have already propagated and advanced in the structure to prolong the operational lifetime of the structure in a safe manner. This goal is achieved while reducing detection and maintenance costs to significantly enhance and improve on the safety of the structure by a providing an early detection tool to detect structural damage. Moreover, aside from the improved safety and performance, the obtained knowledge from SHM can be utilized to improve on the early designs of the structure. Structural aging is caused by continuous loading conditions (low and high loading forces), leading to fatigue cracks in the structure [10]. The exposure to continuous loading conditions leads to crack growth in the structure, leading to catastrophic failures. This is shown by Figure 10.1.