Development of Image Processing Based Lift Estimation Methods To Access The Structural Integrity of Aircraft Canopies

Abstract

One of the ways to ensure the structural integrity of bonded parts like Canopy of aircraft is to measure the lift across the bond line during the pressurization/loading. Based on the lift measured, bonding integrity can be deduced. Presently this lift measurement is manual and skill-based. The current method followed for lift detection of debonds in structures is using Vernier, graph sheets, etc., manually at a few locations. There is a requirement to make the process of inspection more systematic and automated. A non-contact, field-deployable lift measurement scheme was developed and implemented using National Instruments PXIe based instrumentation and LabVIEW Software. The methodology was experimentally verified in the lab. The studies showed that the proposed methodology is able to measure the lifts with maximum error of .04 cm and the results are presented in the paper.