DRDO Test-flies Nishant UAV With Structural Health Monitoring

DRDO Statement: Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) a premier DRDO laboratory has conducted Nishant trials (N15-32) on 28.10.2010 at Kolar Airfield in which a technology breakthrough has been achieved. A new technology called the Structural Health Monitoring has been developed by Bangalore based Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) and National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) (a CSIR establishment), for the monitoring of structural health parameters while the UAV is in flight. This break-through enables the structural health of aeronautical structures to be monitored, so that online health can be monitored and online and corrective action for the flight can be taken. This enables the aircraft to be flown without unnecessarily grounding them.

Analysis algorithms have been developed to predict onset of failures which would be perfected using the data obtained through today’s flight. Usage of such techniques will avoid periodic grounding of the aircraft and make the maintenance schedules to be more like “on condition maintenance”, the condition being detected even before the failure occurs. It will avoid unnecessary grounding of aircraft for inspection. Such a monitoring can be used for LCA, MCA, FGFA and other UAVs. Such techniques are going to be extensively used in the future in order to cut down the operation costs of the aircraft and can also lead to reduction in airfares. Such techniques can prevent ensuing danger of the flights by pre-warning the occurance of failure.

19 thoughts on “DRDO Test-flies Nishant UAV With Structural Health Monitoring”

  1. Indians getting it from teenagers :-). A nation of warriors…NOT.

    An Australian court today charged a teenager with the murder of Indian student Nitin Garg and heard that the victim was threatened and chased on at least two other occasions before his death. A 16-year-old boy, whose name has not been disclosed due to legal reasons, appeared in a Melbourne children's court today and was charged with one count of murder. The boy's defence lawyer told the court the charges will be contested at a committal hearing early next year.

  2. I prefer such technology on Dhruv, LCH first before going into airplanes. Helicopters by nature are susceptible to such failures in the past. That would be cool thing to have on Heli's.

    Cheers,
    Bharath

  3. The Chinese cheapsake state media is no match for democratic India's private media muscle. Poor commies are so desperate with the aggressive anti-China propoganda that our media channels are dishing out that they are planting unimaginative stories as feeble retaliation. I think we've already won the mindgame against the commies. "Awacs shot down" TCH-TCH such poor imagination I say. Try something better chinks!

  4. Feel sad for the Australians. They might be thinking that by beating up Indians, they'll scare us away. Perhaps the Australians haven't heard about what happened to the Britishers — until 63 years back the Britishers used to beat and shoot the crap out of us, but ultimately they got fed up and left and now they beg us to buy their warplanes & aircraft carriers since they don't have the money. My advice to the Australians: We are country of a billion people a majority of whom are poor, so we may not have the b***s to fight back but we have a lot of spare b***s to offer to be broken… ultimately you'll just get fed up breaking our b***s!

  5. Hi Shiv,

    Nice post thanks. is there any development for converting Nishant into Rustom like conventional UAV is going on? Because you posted wheeled Nishant in your blog.

  6. what chinese brings down AWACS.. no way… Shiv is this true? i thought An32 was down because of Engine.. can you confirm the correct one please

  7. This is very cool technology. I always wondered why they didn't put this technology where it is really needed, like in Boeings and Airbuses. Shiv, any info on how this technology works? Basically, they could put vibration sensors all over the aircraft, track any change in the vibration parameters… and alert ground control when the frequency response of any part changes. What would be cooler, is if they could do a health check-up on the electronics, a much more difficult proposition! Are they processing all this info real time onboard the aircraft or at the ground station? Can electronics be reset in the middle of the flight, and the aircraft flown in manual control, if there's a situation in which the electronics becomes stuck?

    Nice job, DRDO!

  8. Shiv, still waiting for the series that you were going to post on the LCA based on that article from Def Biz magazine..something about the 'Elusive Tejas'. Please post that article.

  9. Re: The Chinese shooting down of Indian Phalcon AWACS is NOT a news item n is a pick-up from an unofficial Chinese Blog. At best, it is part of the psychological warfare tactics of the PLA.

    "The Yadong Junshi blog, captioned “ India Did not Dare Say a Word: China’s HQ 9 Brings Down Indian Military’s Falcon Aircraft”, covers the crash of one of India’s AN-32 transport aircraft in an area in Arunachal Pradesh close to border with China on 9 June 2009. While there has so far been no official Chinese report on the crash, the blog gives its own version different from what Indian authorities have said- the crash was within Indian territory and was due to failure of the engine of the air craft." – D.S. Rajan in South Asia Analysis

    This is the blog where it all started:
    http://www.warchina.com/news/ent/2010-10-16/124375.html

    Request readers to be a bit more discerning n not to fall for rumor mongering.

  10. Hi Shiv!!!

    When are u posting update on HSTDV??
    ISRO had plans to test AVATAR in dec 2010..wats going on with this???

    Thanks!

  11. kunal thanks for clearing that up…..
    it's better to get to the bottom things than to live with half truth and remain uncertain.

    thanks
    -jd

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