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Article
Fusion of sensor geometry into additive strain fields measured with sensing skin
Smart Materials and Structures
  • Austin Downey, Iowa State University
  • Mohammadkazem Sadoughi, Iowa State University
  • Simon Laflamme, Iowa State University
  • Chao Hu, Iowa State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Accepted Manuscript
Publication Date
1-1-2018
DOI
10.1088/1361-665X/aac4cd
Abstract

Recently, numerous studies have been conducted on flexible skin-like membranes for the cost effective monitoring of large-scale structures. The authors have proposed a large-area electronic consisting of a soft elastomeric capacitor (SEC) that transduces a structure's strain into a measurable change in capacitance. Arranged in a network configuration, SECs deployed onto the surface of a structure could be used to reconstruct strain maps. Several regression methods have been recently developed with the purpose of reconstructing such maps, but all these algorithms assumed that each SEC measured strain located at its geometric center. This assumption may not be realistic since an SEC measures the average strain value of the whole area covered by the sensor. One solution is to reduce the size of each SEC, but this would also increase the number of required sensors needed to cover the large-scale structure, therefore increasing the need for the power and data acquisition capabilities. Instead, this study proposes an algorithm that accounts for the sensor's strain averaging feature by adjusting the strain measurements and constructing a full-field strain map using the kriging interpolation method. The proposed algorithm fuses the geometry of an SEC sensor into the strain map reconstruction in order to adaptively adjust the average kriging-estimated strain of the area monitored by the sensor to the signal. Results show that by considering the sensor geometry, in addition to the sensor signal and location, the proposed strain map adjustment algorithm is capable of producing more accurate full-field strain maps than the traditional spatial interpolation method that considered only signal and location

Comments

This is the accepted manuscript of the article Downey, Austin, Mohammad Kazem, Simon Laflamme, and Chao Hu. "Fusion of sensor geometry into additive strain fields measured with sensing skin." Smart Materials and Structures (2018). DOI: 10.1088/1361-665X/aac4cd. Posted with permission.

Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0
Copyright Owner
IOP Publishing Ltd.
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
Austin Downey, Mohammadkazem Sadoughi, Simon Laflamme and Chao Hu. "Fusion of sensor geometry into additive strain fields measured with sensing skin" Smart Materials and Structures (2018)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/simon_laflamme/94/