Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Soft Elastomeric Capacitor Network For Strain Sensing Over Large Surfaces, Simon Laflamme, Husaam S. Saleem, Bharath K. Vasan, Randall L. Geiger, Degang J. Chen, Michael R. Kessler, Krishna Rajan

Randall Geiger

Field applications of existing sensing solutions to structural health monitoring (SHM) of civil structures are limited. This is due to economical and/or technical challenges in deploying existing sensing solutions to monitor geometrically large systems. To realize the full potential of SHM solutions, it is imperative to develop scalable cost-effective sensing strategies. We present a novel sensor network specifically designed for strain sensing over large surfaces. The network consists of soft elastomeric capacitors (SECs) deployed in an array form. Each SEC acts as a surface strain gage transducing local strain into changes in capacitance. Results show that the sensor network can …