Contactless geometric and thickness imperfection measurement system for thin-walled structures

The load carrying capacity of thin-walled shell structures, when designed unstiffened, is highly sensitive to imperfections. In order to study the impact of geometric and thickness imperfections on the load carrying capacity of a thin-walled structure, these imperfections need to be measured. Therefore, in this paper, the development of a measurement system for measuring geometric and thickness imperfections of cylindrical structures with two laser sensors is introduced. Application, design and functionality of the measurement system are discussed in detail in this paper. In addition, the measurement of an unstiffened isotropic test specimen is evaluated. A measurement noise of 30 mu m was detected and filtered using a median filter. The maximum measurement error is 68 mu m. The imperfection magnitude for the PL1 shell structure lies in the order of w is an element of[-0.317 mm; 0.299 mm]. The maximal thickness deviation is in the range of t(real) is an element of[0.155 mm; 0.226 mm]. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.