SHERLOC (Structural HEalth Monitoring, Manufacturing and Repair Technologies for Life Management Of Composite Fuselage, Cleaksky II, coordinated by Imperial, 9.6M€). The overall objective of the proposed project SHERLOC is to combine advanced Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and smart repair technologies with a probabilistic design philosophy, and hence to develop new maintenance concepts to reduce the direct operative costs without lowering the operational safety of a composite fuselage, as set out in call JTI-CS2-CPW1-AIR-02-03 Advanced Technologies for More Affordable Composite Fuselage.

The main four objectives of the project SHERLOC are:

  1. The design, manufacture and test of composite curved fuselage panel (5m), Flat Stiffened panel (1.6m), Window Frame, Floor Beam, Pressure Bulkhead aft and fittings, following a building block approach, and of structures with bonded repairs
  2. The development of advanced technical capabilities for making the integration of sensors in modern composite structures practical and efficient so as to facilitate industrialization and certification.
  3. The development of a methodology that comprises of advanced large scale modelling tools, validated by structural testing, which use/process the sensor signals to predict the residual strength of a damaged structure at the fuselage scale of a regional aircraft.
  4. The development and experimental validation of a probabilistic method to propose a robust design that leads to reduction of maintenance costs during service life and overall component cost.

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