Fiber Bragg Gratings for Prognostics in Space Applications: A Thermo-Mechanical Characterization of Minimally Invasive Sensing Techniques

Upcoming space missions will be characterized by longer duration, higher level of autonomy of the spacecraft and more extensive human presence. These aspects require robust and reliable health monitoring strategies in order to extend the spacecraft operations, increase safety of manned missions and adaptively tailor extended mission profiles according to the actual system health condition. In this context, Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) provide useful tools to determine the system health, estimate its Remaining Useful Life (RUL) and adjust operations to avoid overstressing components. In order to gather the necessary information from the monitored system and estimate its actual health condition and RUL, a distributed network of sensors is needed, measuring heterogeneous quantities with high accuracy and high spatial resolution. Traditional technologies usually require invasive and heavy installations, and prevent fully leveraging the potentialities of PHM algorithms. In this work, we propose the use of optical sensors for strain, temperature and vibration monitoring; an experimental campaign has been carried out to validate this technology, and the results are compared with traditional sensing techniques.