Fabrication and Functionalization of Distributed and Stretchable Sensor Networks for Structural Health Monitoring

Design and Integration of a Wireless Stretchable Multimodal Sensor Network in a Composite Wing

“…Secondly, instead of removing the etch mask by wet etching after releasing the network, which typically causes stiction issues and ruins the sensor network, the Al layer was deliberately retained to mitigate the electromagnetic interference with radio frequencies higher than 6.67 GHz owing to the skin effect. More shielding simulation results can be found in the conference paper [18]. This extra ground layer also provides a preliminary electrical protection for preventing damage to circuits by abnormal conditions, such as overcurrent, high or low voltage.…”

“…The concept of distributed sensors and sensing systems is widely recognized as the most promising technology in the field of state awareness and structural health monitoring (SHM) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Despite the maturity of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) and microelectromechanical system (MEMS) processes, the fabrication of a microscale sensor network capable of deployment on a macroscale structure remains a challenging technical problem [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. The process of deployment from microscale fabrication to meter-level implementation exposes sensitive and fragile hardware components to risk.…”

“…Most recently, Chen et al [18,19] added micro-patterned strain gauges to the sensor network platform and characterized the performance of the strain gauge network. Even though the network has demonstrated the capability of measuring distributed strain, vibration, and temperature, the signal to noise ratios (SNR) of the overall system were still insufficient to compete against the commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) products.…”