SCORPENES

The main objective of Scorpenes is to build a Condition-Based Maintenance related to corrosion management on each Helicopter or Aircraft and to improve the corrosion testing reliability to mature the design. This condition-based maintenance will help to monitor and upcoming equipment failure so maintenance can be proactively scheduled when it is needed – and not before.

The rationale of the project is to make the link between the environmental data and the corrosion risks by monitoring the initiation and development of the corrosion process. Corrosion Monitoring is a process that evaluates and monitors equipment components, structures, process units, and facilities for initial signs of corrosion. Implementing corrosion monitoring has the key advantage to detect early warning signs of corrosion and to determine trends and processing operational parameters that may result in a corrosive environment. Additionally, corrosion monitoring serves to measure the effectiveness of corrosion prevention methods in order to determine if different inspection and/or monitoring techniques should be used.

To ensure corrosion monitoring, the main outcome would be the use of corrosion sensors to sense the rate of corrosion, as this is an important factor for knowing how to predict critical moments in application’s lifetime. As environments are constantly changing, monitoring corrosion data in real-time is a key factor that no corrosion monitoring solution has been done until now.

CIDETEC´s contribution:

The approach of CIDETEC Surface Engineering centre is focused on monitoring via non-destructive testing (NDT) using sensors like Acoustic Emission (AE) for corrosion detection at lab scale and inflight. In particular, CIDETEC will develop methodologies based on AE technique to monitor different corrosion forms affecting helicopters, as well as determine the robustness of the monitoring system through laboratory testing rigs mimicking the conditions of real exposure. CIDETEC will deploy its expertise in corrosion evaluation by studying the mechanisms behind the targeted corrosion forms.