SMART MAT: Self-Sensing Materials and Structures

SMART MAT: This team will create and analyze smart materials capable of intrinsically assessing their condition.

Faculty Mentor:

Description:

Many materials exhibit intrinsic electro-mechanical coupling, meaning that benign electrical measurements can be used to infer stress, strain, damage, etc. Understanding and leveraging this coupling has potential in biomedical technology, structural assessment (e.g., self-sensing drones), robotics, and geospatial imaging among others. The goals of this project are to 1) create self-sensing materials (e.g., via AM), 2) characterize their properties, 3) create electrical hardware (e.g., multiplexers, DAQs, etc.) and software for their implementation, and 4) demonstrate their uses in a variety of case applications.

Relevant Technologies:

  • Smart materials
  • Autonomuous systems
  • Embedded sensing

Pre-requisite knowledge/skills:

Depending on focus within team (not all are required for a single applicant), 1) mechanics of materials, 2) materials science, 3) electrical engineering, and/or 4) mathematics.