Wireless corrosion monitoring for evaluation of aircraft structural health

The military spends billions of dollars annually on inspection, identification, and repair of damage resulting from aircraft corrosion. The currently available methods for identifying aircraft corrosion damage involve expensive, labor intensive scheduled inspections, resulting in longer periods in depot, and reduction in aircraft availability. In order to increase aircraft safety, availability, and operational efficiency, an on-platform monitoring system capable of fusing data streams from an array of environmental and corrosivity sensors is needed to provide inspection-free indicators of the existence of corrosion as well as the level of corrosive severity in difficult to access aircraft locations. This paper will discuss the design, test, and validation of such a system utilizing a wireless, ultra-low power network of sensors.^{1 2}