Luna is at the forefront of corrosion monitoring technologies. We have developed innovative sensors that allow for direct corrosion monitoring as well as the ability to indirectly predict corrosion on nearby surfaces.
CorRES Coating System Evaluation
Organic coating systems with corrosion inhibitors are the primary means of protecting structures from atmospheric corrosion in harsh environments. Environmental compliance and a desire for increased performance continue to drive coating development and new product introductions. Current corrosion tests and measurement methods for qualification and selection of aerospace coatings often do not assess the highest risk failure modes of localized corrosion, galvanic attack, and environment assisted cracking. Furthermore, traditional coating characterization methods do not quantify material and environmental interactions needed to establish relative coating performance in accelerated tests, outdoor exposures, or service environments.
The Luna Corrosion and Coating Evaluation System (CorRES) addresses the important need for improved measurement and monitoring techniques that can be used to accelerate new coating introductions and monitor coating performance in outdoor service environments. CorRES supports extensible network of measurement systems each with multimodal sensors for comprehensive evaluation of the capacity of a corrosion protection system to control alloy free corrosion and galvanic corrosion, maintain barrier properties, and resist environment assisted cracking. The sensors are compliant with the ANSI/NACE TM0416-2016 for monitoring atmospheric corrosion. The system is compatible with existing accelerated test chambers and suitable for use in outdoor service environments.
LS2A Environmental Corrosion Monitoring
Corrosion control may account for up to 40% of US military aircraft maintenance and sustainment costs. In order to better manage aircraft sustainment and maintenance, the Luna Sensor Suite for Aircraft (LS2A) monitoring has been developed. The aircraft corrosion monitoring system is lightweight and small size and can operate for long periods using battery power. The system supports either wired or wireless data transmission and can be easily retrofit into airframes. To support individual aircraft tracking, maintenance activities, and fleet management, data analysis techniques have been developed to track and visualize environmental severity within airframes for clear, intuitive, and informative presentation of environmental severity. The system provides users with actionable information for determining locations within an airframe where corrosion mitigation is required. The impact of operational, storage, and maintenance practices on corrosion can be quantified. Both short-term and long-term environmental trends can be detected and quantified to improve and predict corrosion performance. Luna has experience with monitoring multiple types of fixed and rotary wing aircraft operating in a wide variety of geographic locations and the sensors are compliant with the ANSI/NACE TM0416-2016 for monitoring atmospheric corrosion.
Integrated Aircraft Sensor Network for Real Time Leak Detection (LCDS)
The Wireless Leakage and Contaminant Detection System (LCDS) couples low-power, light weight sensor hardware with advanced visualization tools to provide enhanced visibility into airframe contaminants. The system identifies aircraft contamination stemming from fuel leaks, environmental contaminants, and atmospheric pollutants in hard to reach areas. The LCDS leverages the existing Air Force owned and operated ICARR-3D point of maintenance tool for corrosion and contaminant visualization and tracking. Ultimately, the system will provide integration with the existing Air Force AIRCAT maintenance database for long-term, fleet-wide tracking of airframe corrosion and contamination.
Embedded Coating System Monitoring
Luna is developing an embedded electrode sensor array that enables direct measurement of coating properties and the presence of corrosion of aircraft components. The electrodes can be placed within the coating system during coating application at locations of interest. Data such as coating barrier properties, inhibitor loss, and presence of defects or substrate corrosion can be obtained using impedance measurements between an array of electrodes or between individual electrodes and the substrate. The ability to measure and monitor coating condition continuously or instantaneously during inspection throughout an aircraft’s life cycle will allow for enhanced sustainment practices..
Coating Health Monitoring
Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy can be used to monitor the integrity of protective coatings that inhibit corrosion within tanks and enclosures. Luna has developed a low power embedded sensing system capable of making these measurements, and providing data to neural network models that identify and track the presence of coating defects. This system estimates the size and location of defects so that maintainers can schedule repair operations using condition based information rather than time-based intervals.