Entwicklung einer intelligenten Struktur : eine Kombination globaler und lokaler Verfahren zur Schadensdiagnose

To realise a product idea in the best technical way has been the dominating thought of the
past, whereas today it becomes more and more likely that the operating costs will decide
about the economical success of a product. The solution of this problem could be found in the
principals and concepts developed in the context of the idea of a lightweight construction. The
mayor concern of such a construction is to reduce structural weight - and at the same time
related operational costs - without decreasing technological properties. This goal can only be
achieved by taking into account that a damage may already occur within economic life-time.
Such a concept may then be called a “damage tolerant design”. The monitoring of structures
describes the topic of the so-called “structural health monitoring” (SHM), which includes all
methods, developments and research activities in this field.

The paper starts with an overview of today’s research activities in the field of structural health
monitoring. The focus is directed to global and local methods that will later be used for the
development of a smart structure. The author defines a smart structure as a structure that is
equipped with sensors and actuators and that includes all algorithms to perform a self
diagnosis.

The basics of this paper describe the theory and the physical mechanisms the used and
developed methods are based on. After that the developed smart structure will be introduced.
The last two chapters finally show the performance of the smart structure and give an outlook
on the research activities that still have to be done.