Engineering Commons^™

A Wireless, Multi-Channel Printed Capacitive Strain Gauge System For Structural Health Monitoring, Kshama Lakshmi Ranganatha

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Structural health monitoring of soft structural textiles plays a key role within the space industry to ensure the safety and integrity of space habitats, parachutes, and decelerator systems. Strain monitoring could be an effective means to evaluate structural integrity, but conventional monitoring systems are not suitable because they are intended for large, rigid structures. To overcome the limitations of rigid sensors, we recently proposed using printed capacitive strain gauges (CSGs) on flexible substrates to monitor the structural health of soft structure materials. Here, we present a strategy and implementation of a wireless, multi-channel readout system for distributed monitoring of soft …