Structural health management is one of the key technologies to ensure safety and reliability of long use structures in general but aircrafts in particular. Non-destructive testing based current methods for periodic inspections are not only prohibitively expensive but also not sufficient to ensure safety. SHM technology on the other hand has matured and reached a good technology readiness level (TRL), however, lacks proper integration into the vehicle platforms as this often requires advanced system architecture to accommodate SHM sensing and processing on-board. This becomes especially challenging in the aerospace industry due to scale, weight and cost constraints. Therefore, approaches to innovate in the area of SHM development and integration methods are sought through topics such as below:

• Sensor systems for structural damage detection and health prognostics
• Reconfigurable embedded systems for multi-sensors interfacing and instrumentation
• Integrated diagnostics and prognostics architectures
• Algorithms for health assessment and prognosis based on multiple sensors data
• Model-based approaches for robust prognostics and health management
• Data mining methods for structural health management
• Damage detection and failure prediction in structures

Improved SHM systems would include detection, diagnosis and prognosis capabilities to fully exploit their sensing capability. The key question to ask is – Can we listen to damage? Ultrasound is a mechanical wave and is therefore ideally suited to interrogate mechanical condition and functionality of materials and structures. The interaction between these waves and the internal microstructure obeys the rational principles of Solid Mechanics and can be therefore fundamentally modeled and understood. However significant challenges are nowadays waiting for researchers to unveil answers, such as tackling the structural complexity of composite materials, how to integrate ultrasonic readings directly into prognosis algorithms, or how to optimally design the modality and configuration of ultrasound and the sensor positioning, just to give mention a few. Likewise, other methods based on fiber optic sensors such as Fiber Bragg Gratings, magnetostrictive sensors, piezoelectric sensors, strain gages, or vibration monitoring are of interest for this session.

In this spirit, this session aims to foster the exchange of new ideas by gathering the state-of-the-art developments pertaining to computational mechanics, sensing, signal processing and materials science. It aims to include, but is not limited to the treatment of problems such as:

• Fatigue monitoring by ultrasonics
• Fiber Bragg Grating monitoring and prognosis technology
• Vibration analysis for structure health prognosis
• Acoustic emission for prognosis
• Ultrasound-based SHM in composites
• Composites monitoring by ultrasonics
• Ultrasound-damage interaction
• Real time reliability assessment
• Integrating SHM and PHM using model-based ultrasound measurements
• Bayesian methods for ultrasonic damage monitoring
• On-line techniques for structural health monitoring and prognostics
• Predictive inference integration with ultrasonics
• Probabilistic mechanics of evolutionary properties
• Nonlinear ultrasonics
• Sensor design and positioning
• SHM data digital filtering and processing

This session focuses on topics related to PHM of in-land and off-shore wind energy structures. In particular papers and posters on the following research topics are solicited:

• Asset Management – discuss how the data obtained from different wind energy farms is being utilized for structural/service/maintenance lifing assessment.
• Structural Health Monitoring – the use of broad range of sensing techniques for damage and load monitoring applications.
• Future trends on diagnostic and prognostic algorithms – a broad discussion on the use of future technologies not currently available in the field for achieving a condition based maintenance approach.