Open Access

ARTICLE

Vacuum Loss State Monitoring of Aerospace Vacuum Pressure Vessels Based on Quasi-Distributed FBG Sensing Technology

Zhe Gong¹, Ge Yan², Jie Ma¹, Chang-Lin Yan², Fu-Kang Shen¹, Hu Li³, Hua-Ping Wang^1,*

1 School of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China
2 Lanzhou Vacuum Equipment Limited Liability Company, Lanzhou, 730000, China
3 China Yangtze Power Co., Ltd., Yichang, 443000, China

* Corresponding Author: Hua-Ping Wang. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Sensing Data Based Structural Health Monitoring in Engineering)

Structural Durability & Health Monitoring 2025, 19(3), 473-498. https://doi.org/10.32604/sdhm.2024.057916

Received 30 August 2024; Accepted 26 November 2024; Issue published 03 April 2025

Abstract

Vacuum pressure vessels are one of the critical components in the aerospace field, and understanding the mechanical behavior feature is particularly important for safe operation. Therefore, it is meaningful to obtain the stress and strain distributions in the key positions of the vacuum tank, which can contribute to the safe performance assessment, operation efficiency, and fault analysis. Hence, this paper provides the distribution characteristics and variation rules of stress and tank strain of vacuum under different internal and external pressures through the elastic theoretical analysis and iteration method. The quasi-distributed fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors and the layout on the vacuum pressure vessel have thus been designed to monitor the whole vacuum extraction and loss process under three different loading conditions. Data analysis based on the theoretical results and monitoring information has further been conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed monitoring method for possible leakage defects. Research results indicate that the continuously monitoring data can quite sensitively and accurately characterize the microstrain variation features of the vacuum tank at different vacuum stages, and the loading-induced vibration effect should be carefully considered during the data interpretation. The study can provide scientific support for the vacuum loss state monitoring and safe performance assessment of the vacuum pressure vessels.

---

Keywords

---