The title of this post is the title of a talk that I will deliver during the Pint of Science Festival in Liverpool later this month.  ...  This year I am moving up the size scale and from biomedical engineering to aerospace engineering to talk about condition monitoring in aircraft structures based on our recent research in the INSTRUCTIVE [see 'INSTRUCTIVE final reckoning' on January 9, 2019] and DIMES [see 'Our last DIMES' on September 22, 2021] projects.  I am going describe how we have reduced the size and cost of infrared instrumentation for monitoring damage propagation in aircraft structures while at the same time increasing the resolution so that we can detect 1 mm increments in crack growth in metals and 6 mm diameter indications of damage in composite materials.  ...

This blog post appeared on May 10^th, 2023, on realizeengineering.blog

Some years ago I wrote with great excitement about publishing a paper in Royal Society Open Science [see ‘Press release!‘ on November 15^th, 2017].  This has become a routine event; however, the excitement returned earlier this month when we had a paper published in the Proceedings of Royal Society of London on ‘A thermal emissions-based real-time monitoring system for in situ detection of cracks’. ... The device detects the changes in the temperature distribution over the surface of the metal caused by the propagation of a crack due to repeated loading of the metal.  It is based on the principles of thermoelastic stress analysis ...

This blog post appeared on October 26^th, 2022, on realizeengineering.blog

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about ‘Our last DIMES’ meetings.  They were hybrid meetings with about half the participants attending in person and the remainder on-line.  ...  One of our first steps was to re-equip our meeting rooms with higher quality video conferencing facilities ... If you have never been present during a wing-bend test or a fatigue test on a large composite panel then you might find these clips interesting (see also the video of ‘Noisy progressive failure of a composite panel’ ).  We also produced an introductory video for the DIMES project which was to be first in a series of video shorts but the pandemic intervened ...

For more short videos from our earlier projects see ‘Archive video footage from EU projects’ on June 5^th, 2019.

This blog post appeared on October 6^th, 2021, on realizeengineering.blog

Thirty-three months ago (see ‘Finding DIMES‘ on February 6th, 2019) we set off at a gallop ‘to develop and demonstrate an automated measurement system that integrates a range of measurement approaches to enable damage and cracks to be detected and monitored as they originate at multi-material interfaces in an aircraft assembly’. ...   Two weeks ago, we held our final review meeting. ...   Our innovative technology allows condition-led monitoring based on automated damage detection and enables ground tests on aircraft structures to be run 24/7 saving about 3 months on each year-long test.

This blog post appeared on September 22^nd, 2021, on realizeengineering.blog

Composite materials have revolutionized many fields of engineering by providing lightweight strong components whose internal structure can be tailored to optimise their load-bearing capabilities. ...  Last month, we completed a further round of tests at Empa to demonstrate the system’s capabilities on composite structures which have been tested almost to destruction.  ...  Watch and listen to this short video to see and hear the material being torn apart – ignore the loud creaking and groaning from the test rig, it’s the quieter sound like dead leaves being swept up.

This blog post appeared on June 30^th, 2021, on realizeengineering.blog

While pandemic lockdowns and travel bans are having a severe impact on spontaneity and creativity in research, they have induced a high level of ingenuity to achieve the final objective of the DIMES project, which is to conduct prototype demonstrations and evaluation tests of the DIMES integrated measurement system.  We have gone beyond the project brief by developing a remote installation system that allows local engineers at a test site to successfully set-up and run our measurement system. This has saved thousands of airmiles and several tonnes of CO2 emissions ...  We are about to stretch our capabilities further by conducting a remote installation and evaluation test during a full-scale aircraft test at the Aerospace Research Centre of the National Research Council Canada in Ottawa, Canada. ...  

This blog post appeared on April 14^th, 2021, on realizeengineering.blog

The capability to identify damage and track its propagation in structures is important in ensuring the safe operation of a wide variety of engineering infrastructure, including aircraft structures. ...   This blog post appeared on February 24^th, 2021, on realizeengineering.blog

In the DIMES project we have developed an innovative system for detecting and monitoring the propagation of damage in aircraft structures, and prior to the pandemic, we were planning to demonstrate it on a full-scale test of an aircraft fuselage section at Airbus in Toulouse. ... We designed a communication system that included a headset with camera, microphone and earpieces so that our colleague in Toulouse could be guided through the installation of our system by engineers in Germany, Switzerland and the UK. ...   This blog post appeared on December 2^nd, 2020, on realizeengineering.blog

Today is ‘This is Engineering’ day organised by the Royal Academy of Engineering to showcase what engineers and engineering really look like, celebrate our impact on the world and shift public perception of engineering towards an appreciation that engineers are a varied and diverse group of people who are critical to solving societal challenges.  You can find out more at https://www.raeng.org.uk/events/online-events/this-is-engineering-day-2020.  I have decided to contribute to ‘This is Engineering’ day by describing what I do on a typical working day as an engineer. ...   This blog post appeared on November 4^th, 2020, on realizeengineering.blog

Two weeks ago, I wrote about supervising PhD students and my own PhD thesis.  The tedium of collecting data as a PhD student without digital instrumentation stimulated me to work subsequently on automation in experimental mechanics which ultimately led to projects like INSTRUCTIVE and DIMES.  In INSTRUCTIVE we developed  low-cost digital sensors for tracking damage in components; while in DIMES we are transitioning the technology into the industrial environment using tests on full-scale aircraft systems as demonstrators...   This blog post appeared on September 30^th, 2020, on realizeengineering.blog

f you have travelled in Asia then you will probably have experienced having your health monitored by infrared cameras as you disembarked from your flight. ... In the DIMES project, we have implemented a low-cost sensor system that integrates infrared and visible images with information about applied loads from point sensors, which allows the identification of initiation and tracking of damage in aircraft structures... This blog post appeared on June 17^th, 2020, on realizeengineering.blog

...A few months ago, Airbus delivered a section of an A320 wing to the labs of EMPA who are our project partner in Switzerland, and the team at EMPA has been rigging the wing section for a simple bending test so that we can use it to test the integrated measurement system which we are developing in the DIMES project. ... This blog post appeared on December 11^th, 2019, on realizeengineering.blog

... My research group is working on how we demonstrate the fidelity of predictions from models, how we establish trust in both predictions from computational models and measurements from experiments that are often also ‘models’ of the real world.  The issues are similar whether we are considering the structural performance of aircraft [as in DIMES], the impact of agro-chemicals, or the performance of fusion energy and the impact of a geological disposal site.... This blog post appeared on October30^th, 2019, on realizeengineering.blog

...I gave a short briefing on DIMES to a group of Airbus engineers last month and it was good see some excitement in the room about the direction of the project.  And, it felt good to be highlighting how we are building on earlier investments in research by joining the dots to create a deployable measurement system and delivering the complete picture in terms of information about the condition of the structure. This blog post appeared on July 10^th, 2019, on realizeengineering.blog

...To quote our EU documentation, the overall aim of DIMES is ‘to develop and demonstrate an automated measurement system that integrates a range of measurement approaches to enable damage and cracks to be detected and monitored as they originate at multi-material interfaces in an aircraft assembly’.... This blog post appeared on February 6^th, 2019, on realizeengineering.blog