This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I research project researches a single sensor patch capable of sensing damage across several length and time scales in an autonomous fashion, enabling this sensor product to reach a wider market and, more importantly, removing a technical barrier from the structural health monitoring and non destructive evaluation technologies. The proposed research solves the problem of monitoring structural integrity across multiple time and distance scales by integrating three detection methodologies into a single sensor device combined with reconfigurable computing and energy harvesting to produce a wireless, standalone, multifunctional sensor/actuator patch. The innovation here is the use of one physical transduction principle (piezoelectric effect) to simultaneously sense and actuate across large frequency (time) and length scales combined with concepts of reconfigurable computing to select different sensing scales.
This sensor solution will vastly improve monitoring capabilities in public utilities and industries ranging from the nuclear power utilities to the aircraft industry. The proposed sensing solution would greatly reduce the required number of sensing units, substantially reducing the cost and complexity of monitoring systems, thus enabling more industries to seek monitoring solutions extending the life and safety of their products. The increased ability proposed here will directly improve public safety.
