Damage Detection in Composite Aircraft Fuselages Under Load and Temperature Using Gaussian Processes for GW-SHM

Abstract

A full-scale composite door surrounding aircraft structure was instrumented with a GW-SHM system and subjected to three representative quasi-static load cases using a hydraulic test rig and broad temperature variations throughout the experiment. A data- driven approach based on Gaussian Processes is used to detect barely visible impact damage introduced during the test campaign, differentiating between benign environmental/operational conditions and barely visible impact damage.