Conductive Polymer Sensor Arrays - A New Frontier Technology for CBM
Abstract
Today's commercial and military aircraft require significant manpower resources to provide operational readiness and safety of flight. Aging aircraft fleets are much in need of new and innovative health-monitoring methods to prevent catastrophic failure and reduce life-cycle costs. The key needs of characterizing in situ structural integrity characteristics of corrosion and barely visible impact damage (BVID) to determine the "damage susceptibility" must be addressed. This paper presents a new concept for performing onboard real-time monitoring using conductive polymer sensor array technology. Using conductive polymer thick film (PTF) technology and elastomer materials, Honeywell is developing a family of low-cost sensor-on-film technology (SOFT) capable of sensing temperature, moisture, vibration, structural impact and, strain quantities. These sensors conform to surface profiles (6 to 10 mils thick) adding little weight and can he easily replicated to provide deeply distributed and highly redundant web architecture solutions. The SOFT approach is based on the novel idea of directly integrating sensory, control, and data processing electronics into the system of interest (vehicle, space-borne structure, etc.). The polymer sensory system is proposed to conform to the shape of the platform into which it would be integrated, or in other words, be "conformal," which by definition means to "have the same shape or contour". The technical approach defines the novel idea of using a polymer film as a flexible substrate, on the backside of which electrical interconnects, sensory functions, and data processing electronics would be directly integrated. The sensory functions are defined by incorporating polymer thick-film patterns on the film surface which can then be bonded to the platform of interest to perform failure prevention diagnostics.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 05, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADP013511
Entities
People
- Jeffrey N. Schoess
Organizations
- Honeywell International, Inc.