Smart Skin on Aircraft Will Sense & Detect Damage

Smart Skin on Aircraft will Sense and Detect Damage . The BAE Systems of Britain are working on evolving a human like skin on aircraft which will help in sensing wind speed ,Outside temperature ,strain on aircraft skin and other physical movement.

This new smart skin will be much more accurate and reliable than the present sensor technology. This revolutionary ‘smart skin’ will enable aircraft to monitor the health, reporting back on potential problems before they become large. This would even reduce the need for regular check-ups on the ground and spare parts could be replaced in a timely manner. This smart skin will increase the efficiency of aircraft maintenance, the availability of the plane and will definitely improve safety of aircraft.

Actually, The Skin of the aircraft will have  tiny sensors or ‘motes’ which will be as small as grains of rice and even as small as dust particles at less than 1mm in size. The sensors would have their own power source and when paired with the appropriate software, it will  be able to communicate in similar way that human skin sends signals to the brain. The sensors are so small that we can even spray them on aircraft like paint.

Senior Research Scientist Lydia Hyde invented this smart skin and thought about it when she was washing the clothes and saw that the dryer uses a sensor for preventing from overheating.Lydia said: “Observing how a simple sensor can be used to stop a domestic appliance overheating, got me thinking about how this could be applied to my work and how we could replace bulky, expensive sensors with cheap, miniature, multi-functional ones. This in turn led to the idea that aircraft, or indeed cars and ships, could be covered by thousands of these motes creating a ‘smart skin’ that can sense the world around them and monitor their condition by detecting stress, heat or damage. The idea is to make platforms ‘feel’ using a skin of sensors in the same way humans or animals do. 

Smart Skin is the latest technology in aviation field with which lakhs of aircraft will get benefited.