Struc­tural Health Moni­to­ring

Struc­tural Health Moni­toring is espe­cially crit­ical for light­weight mate­rials, which offer excep­tional strength-to-weight ratios, but also present unique chal­lenges regarding damage detec­tion, safety, and main­te­nance. The objec­tive of this project is to enable the early detec­tion of crack forma­tion, mechan­ical stress, temper­a­ture changes, delam­i­na­tion, and other struc­tural anom­alies on fiber-rein­forced compos­ites, sand­wich panels, and similar mate­rials. This requires a unique sensing approach for which the devel­op­ment and discreet embed­ding of addi­tively manu­fac­tured sensors or direct fabri­ca­tion of sensors on the mate­rials is fore­seen in the project.

The use of addi­tive manu­fac­tured sensors is ensuring struc­tural integrity, reli­able data acqui­si­tion, mechan­ical compat­i­bility, cost-effec­tive­ness, and scal­a­bility for indus­trial use.

The Main Chal­lenges

• Ensuring sensor func­tion­ality across varying envi­ron­mental condi­tions (temper­a­ture, humidity, aging, mechan­ical stress)
• Adapting solu­tions to different mate­rial combi­na­tions
• Main­taining the struc­tural and mechan­ical integrity of the panels with inte­grated/​embedded sensors

Re­search Topics

• Design and fabri­ca­tion of printed sensor struc­tures for real-time struc­tural health moni­toring of light­weight compos­ites
• Inte­gra­tion tech­niques for embed­ding sensors within composite panel struc­tures
• Signal analysis methods for iden­ti­fying weak­ening of struc­tural integrity etc. caused by delam­i­na­tion etc.
• Eval­u­a­tion of sensor perfor­mance under envi­ron­mental and mechan­ical stresses
• Compat­i­bility of sensor systems with different mate­rial pair­ings
• Devel­op­ment of low-cost, scal­able manu­fac­turing processes for sensor inte­gra­tion