  An idealized demonstrator of an civil aircraft wing spoiler in scale 1:2 is
developed to evaluate strain-based structural health monitoring (SHM) methods
under realistic loading conditions. SHM promises to increase operational safety
and reduce maintenance costs of optimized lightweight structures by its early
damage detection capabilities. Also localization and size identification of
damages could be shown for simple parts, e.g. beams or plates in many
laboratory experiments. However, the application of SHM systems on real
structures under realistic loading conditions is cost intensive and time
consuming. Furthermore, testing facilities which are large enough to fit full
scale aircraft parts are often not available. The proposed procedure of
developing a scaled spoiler demonstrator under idealized loading and support
conditions solves these issues for strain-based SHM. The procedure shows how to
reproduce the deformation shape of a real aircraft spoiler under a heavy
loading condition during landing by numerical optimization. Subsequent finite
element simulations and experimental measurements proved similar deformations
and strain states of the idealized demonstrator and the real spoiler. Thus,
using the developed idealized spoiler demonstrator strain-based SHM systems can
be tested under loading conditions similar to realistic operational loads by
significantly reduced test effort and costs.
