Paving the Way to Wireless Fiber Optic Sensing Applied to Helicopter Rotor Blade Instrumentation and Monitoring

Abstract

Between 2018 and 2021, Airbus Helicopters and Safran Data Systems have conducted an innovation project called HIRIS in the frame of a European project aiming at developing a new wireless technology for helicopter rotor instrumentation and included operational Flight Tests on the field during 10 months and 60h flight hours. In the meantime, the interest for Fiber Optic Sensing (FOS) technologies has grown up in the aerospace domain for various structural and environmental monitoring use cases. Safran Data Systems, Safran Tech and FiSens have paved a way to design an ultra-compact optical interrogator compliant with the airborne environments and integrated in a modular Data Acquisition Unit. This paper aims at demonstrating that the latest wireless instrumentation techniques associated with innovative FOS technologies open the capabilities to instrument and monitor helicopter rotor elements such as Rotors blades with an unprecedented level of performances, reliability and low intrusiveness.