SHM implementation

After labor and fuel, maintenance represents the third costly expense in operational support of both regional and national carriers. These maintenance cost generally represent 15-18% of the operational costs and are estimated to be approximately 67% of the total ownership cost. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), a subset of Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM), is seen as an approach to decrease operation and support costs down to a more desirable 50%. For the past several years, several organizations have been investigating and conducting research in the area of SHM with an end objective of conducting fall scale SHM demonstration activities to enhance platform availability through the adoption of advanced maintenance concepts, technologies and methodologies. This document provides an overview of structural health monitoring technology. It introduces the development of emerging concepts and technologies and it discusses several implementation challenges within the aerospace field.