About the talk

Spacecraft components, typically made of aluminium and carbon/glass fibre composite construction, are susceptible to material defects including impact damage and debonds, which are likely to occur during fabrication, testing or in-service (e.g. micro-meteoroids and space debris). Damage inspection of spacecraft is generally performed on-ground or in space during extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) with traditional non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques (e.g. ultrasounds and infrared thermography). However, current NDE methods still lack sufficient sensitivity to micro-flaws, which can growth over time due to complex damage mechanisms and, if undetected, they may lead to catastrophic failure.

This presentation will describe recent research work focused on developing novel NDE inspection methods and “smart” composite structures for the detection and localisation of material micro-cracks and damage at early stage of formation on spacecraft structural components. Various NDE techniques will be here investigated including nonlinear vibro-thermography and both linear and nonlinear ultrasonic methodologies using innovative solutions with networks of piezoelectric transducers either surface bonded or embedded in the spacecraft composite structure. This presentation will also provide an overview of current energy harvesting systems such as thermal electric generators (TEG) to feed low-power electronic devices and future space technologies such as rectifying antennas to convert high power density incident microwave beam into DC electronic power to supply the spacecraft electric propulsion system.