Advanced materials capabilities

Engineering photonics

Instrumentation and sensors underpin all aspects of engineering and applied science and are an invaluable asset in research, preventative maintenance, measurement and monitoring. At the Cranfield Centre for Engineering Photonics, we have a long history of developing innovative optical sensors and instrumentation to provide measurement solutions in challenging environments across multiple industry sectors including aerospace, transport, manufacturing, healthcare, agrifood and environment. The emphasis of our activities lies in the design, development and integration of instrumentation to tackle engineering measurement problems, such as maintenance, repair and inspection. Our portfolio encompasses fibre optic sensors, optical gas sensing, optical flow measurement, optical interferometric non-destructive testing, optical imaging and signal processing. Monitoring helicopter safety with rotor-mounted optical fibre sensors The BLADESENSE project has revolutionised health monitoring for rotorcraft by investigating the aeroelastic behaviour of rotor blades and developing state-of-the-art fibre optic sensors. Funded by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) and led by Airbus Helicopters UK, the sensors were mounted along the length of each blade to measure their strain and shape and determine their ‘health’ and identify changes, sending an alert for further checks, saving costly labour-intensive manual checks

and helicopter down-time. Read more on our website: www.cranfield.ac.uk/bladesense

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