Surface roughness measurement on a wing aircraft by speckle correlation

Sensors (Basel). 2013 Sep 5;13(9):11772-81. doi: 10.3390/s130911772.

Abstract

The study of the damage of aeronautical materials is important because it may change the microscopic surface structure profiles. The modification of geometrical surface properties can cause small instabilities and then a displacement of the boundary layer. One of the irregularities we can often find is surface roughness. Due to an increase of roughness and other effects, there may be extra momentum losses in the boundary layer and a modification in the parasite drag. In this paper we present a speckle method for measuring the surface roughness on an actual unmanned aircraft wing. The results show an inhomogeneous roughness distribution on the wing, as expected according to the anisotropic influence of the winds over the entire wing geometry. A calculation of the uncertainty of the technique is given.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aircraft / instrumentation*
  • Algorithms*
  • Equipment Design
  • Equipment Failure Analysis
  • Lasers*
  • Manufactured Materials / analysis*
  • Materials Testing / instrumentation*
  • Photometry / instrumentation*
  • Photometry / methods*
  • Statistics as Topic
  • Surface Properties