Functionalized Fiber Reinforced Composites via Thermally Drawn Multifunctional Fiber Sensors

Abstract

Monitoring fiber reinforced polymer composites (FRPC) during their production and operation is becoming crucial to track the performance of the final parts and optimize the overall life cycle. The challenges associated with integrating multifunctional sensors with the required aspect ratio, manufacturing scalability, robustness, and performance within FRPC parts remain, however, unresolved. Here, a novel class of electronic polymer fiber sensors that can be seamlessly integrated within FRPC, and can sense and decouple cure time, temperature, and strain during and postprocessing is reported. It is shown that the particular fiber geometry induces a minimal impact on the final FRPC microstructure. Integrating both capacitive‐ and resistive‐based sensors within the electronic fibers, the monitoring of the resin flow and its curing during the production of FRPC parts is demonstrated. Finally, the embedded fiber sensors are used to measure and decouple thermal and mechanical loads imposed on the parts during their use, paving the way toward a new platform for smart and connected fiber reinforced polymer composites.

Controlled filamentation instability as a scalable fabrication approach to flexible metamaterials

“…Using multi-scale fluid dynamics simulations, we develop a model to account for the rearrangement process down to nanometric dimensions. The model further establishes universal conditions under which such filamentation occurs, applicable to other materials such as metallic glasses 22,35 or conductive composites [36][37][38] . Finally, since the versatility of the drawing process allows engineering of the NW array to fit optical requirements, we propose an architecture for applications that benefit from the high refractive index of ChG.…”

Capillary Effects in Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composite Processing: A Review

“…with several conventional fabric types. Developments have been made to overcome this issue, e.g., by insulating the sensor with a dielectric material and optimization of the sensor characteristics (Pouchias et al, 2019;Caglar et al, 2021a). However, these types of sensors have not yet been employed to study unsaturated flow phenomena to-date.…”

Challenges in Materials and Devices of Electronic Skin

“…Integrating less specifically yet distinctively responsive multilayered materials are also applicable by incorporating decoupling algorithms. For example, artificial neural networks (ANNs) were established to distinguish temperature and strain based on differentiated outputs of two aligned or orthogonally placed electrodes in a thermally drawn fiber sensor . Similarly, nanofiber networks of IGZO, CuO, and ITO exhibited distinct patterns of relative resistance variations which were further processed to detect strain, pressure, temperature, illuminance, and exhaled gas in real time .…”

“…For example, artificial neural networks (ANNs) were established to distinguish temperature and strain based on differentiated outputs of two aligned or orthogonally placed electrodes in a thermally drawn fiber sensor. 164 Similarly, nanofiber networks of IGZO, CuO, and ITO exhibited distinct patterns of relative resistance variations which were further processed to detect strain, pressure, temperature, illuminance, and exhaled gas in real time. 165 On the other hand, multilayers could enable independent readout by means of noninterfering sensing mechanisms.…”