Deformation Measurement

Aerospace Application Example

Air­bus has built a rep­u­ta­tion for inno­v­a­tive air­craft, rec­og­nized around  the world for their safe­ty and effi­cien­cy. All of these attrib­ut­es are dri­ven by a top-notch test­ing pro­gram, whose inno­v­a­tive prac­tice are evi­denced by their use of the Vic-3D mea­sure­ment system.

One of the goals of the Air­bus test­ing pro­gram is to char­ac­ter­ize the struc­tur­al dam­age caused by col­li­sions between the air­craft and small pro­jec­tiles such as birds and oth­er ground based debris, and to ensure that the struc­tur­al integri­ty of the air­craft is maintained.

This type of event can be repro­duced by fir­ing a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent types of pro­jec­tile at a piece of air­craft struc­ture at a high veloc­i­ty. The results obtained can be used to com­pare with com­put­er mod­els of the struc­ture under impact loads, lead­ing to more high­ly opti­mized and safer designs.

 

Dr. Richard Bur­guete, exper­i­men­tal mechan­ics spe­cial­ist at Air­bus UK since 1997, explains the ben­e­fits of this approach as fol­lows: “The VIC-3D sys­tem allows us to be sure we have cap­tured all of the rel­e­vant data, some of which might have oth­er­wise been unobtainable.”