Novel corrosion sensor based on carbon nanotube composites for structural health monitoring

Bridges are important infrastructures of all nations and are required for transportation of goods as well as human. A catastrophic failure can result in loss of lives and enormous financial hardship to the nation. Hence, there is an urgent need to monitor our infrastructures to prolong their life span, at the same time catering for heavier and faster moving traffics. Although various kinds of sensors are now available to monitor the health of the structures due to corrosion, they do not provide permanent and long term measurements. This paper investigates the fabrication of Carbon Nanotube (CNT) based composite sensors for structural health monitoring. The CNTs, a key material in nanotechnology has aroused great interest in the research community due to their remarkable mechanical, electrochemical, piezoresistive and other physical properties. Multi-wall CNT (MWCNT)/Nafion composite sensors were fabricated to evaluate their electrical properties when subjected to chemical solutions, to simulate a chemical reaction due to corrosion and real life corrosion experimental tests. The electrical resistance of the sensor electrode was dramatically changed due to corrosion. The novel sensor is expected to effectively detect corrosion in structures based on the measurement of electrical impedances of the CNT composite

3D-Printed Load Cell Using Nanocarbon Composite Strain Sensor

The development of a 3D-Printed Load Cell (PLC) was studied using a nanocarbon composite strain sensor (NCSS) and a 3D printing process. The miniature load cell was fabricated using a low-cost LCD-based 3D printer with UV resin. The NCSS composed of 0.5 wt% MWCNT/epoxy was used to create the flexure of PLC. PLC performance was evaluated under a rated load range; its output was equal to the common value of 2 mV/V. The performance was also evaluated after a calibration in terms of non-linearity, repeatability, and hysteresis, with final results of 2.12%, 1.60%, and 4.42%, respectively. Creep and creep recovery were found to be 1.68 (%FS) and 4.16 (%FS). The relative inferiorities of PLC seem to originate from the inherent hyper-elastic characteristics of polymer sensors. The 3D PLC developed may be a promising solution for the OEM/design-in load cell market and may also result in the development of a novel 3D-printed sensor

A Spray-On Carbon Nanotube Artificial Neuron Strain Sensor for Composite Structural Health Monitoring

We present a nanocomposite strain sensor (NCSS) to develop a novel structural health monitoring (SHM) sensor that can be easily installed in a composite structure. An NCSS made of a multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT)/epoxy composite was installed on a target structure with facile processing. We attempted to evaluate the NCSS sensing characteristics and benchmark compared to those of a conventional foil strain gauge. The response of the NCSS was fairly good and the result was nearly identical to the strain gauge. A neuron, which is a biomimetic long continuous NCSS, was also developed, and its vibration response was investigated for structural damage detection of a composite cantilever. The vibration response for damage detection was measured by tracking the first natural frequency, which demonstrated good result that matched the finite element (FE) analysis

Piezoresistive Characteristics of Nanocarbon Composite Strain Sensor by Its Longitudinal Pattern Design

For an engineering feasibility study, we studied a simple design to improve NCSS (nanocarbon composite strain sensor) sensitivity by using its geometric pattern at a macro scale. We fabricated bulk- and grid-type sensors with different filler content weights (wt.%) and different sensor lengths and investigated their sensitivity characteristics. We also proposed a unit gauge factor model of NCSS to find a correlation between sensor length and its sensitivity. NCSS sensitivity was improved proportional to its length incremental ratio and we were able to achieve better linear and consistent data from the grid type than the bulk type one. We conclude that the longer sensor length results in a larger change of resistance due to its piezoresistive unit summation and that sensor geometric pattern design is one of the important issues for axial load and deformation measurement

3D printing of highly conductive nanocomposites for the functional optimization of liquid sensors

The utilization of 3D printing of highly conductive (σ ≈ 2350 S m−1) polymer composite structures for the functional optimization of scaffold-shaped liquid sensors is demonstrated. This study can open the pathway of the application of 3D printing of conductive composites for optimization of structures useful for various applications such as smart sensors in textile or in the field of electronics