Implications and Initiatives

Since the early days of adaptronics aeronautics and space travel has been a most significant player in driving adaptronics ahead. A large amount of work was done along concept studies which ended up in partially even showing hardware demonstration at full scale very recently. Adaptronics in aeronautics can be split into the following areas of activity  

Compared to the mid 1990s, there has not been too much variation in the sensing and actuation principles to be used. With regard to sensing optical fibre and piezoelectric sensors are dominant, followed by MEMS, which however still rather plays a secondary role. On the actuation side piezoelectric 

In Japan the New Energy Development Organisation (NEDO) launched a nationwide adaptronics related programme in 1998 [7], where the aerospace related projects have been looking into SHM of aircraft fuselages and space 

Trying to rate adaptronics in aerospace on the basis of NAS As Technology Readiness Level (TRL) brings it currently no much higher than to TRL 5 or 6 (component validation) on the 9 levels scale to be achieved when considering a system to be flight proven. 

A variety of overview papers related to aerospace can be found in Smart Materials and Structures published by the Institute of Physics Publ. since 1992 and the International Journal on Intelligent Material Systems and Structures published by SAGE Publications since 1990. Another important source is the AIAA-Journal. Besides different aerospace related articles spread over the different issues of Smart Materials and Structures, there have been published a number or aerospace related special issues being related to space [17,18] and rotorcraft [19,20] respectively. A number of different 

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Ring, J. 2012. Systems of the Third Kind Distinctions, Implications, and Initiatives. INCOSE INSIGHT, Vol.l5,p.9-12. 

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