Large-area resistive strain sensing sheet for structural health monitoring

Damage significantly influences response of a strain sensor only if it occurs in the proximity of the sensor. Thus, two-dimensional (2D) sensing sheets covering large areas offer reliable early-stage damage detection for structural health monitoring (SHM) applications. This paper presents a scalable sensing sheet design consisting of a dense array of thin-film resistive strain sensors. The sensing sheet is fabricated using flexible printed circuit board (Flex-PCB) manufacturing process which enables low-cost and high-volume sensors that can cover large areas. The lab tests on an aluminum beam showed the sheet has a gauge factor of 2.1 and has a low drift of 1.5 µɛ/day. The field test on a pedestrian bridge showed the sheet is sensitive enough to track strain induced by the bridge’s temperature variations. The strain measured by the sheet had a root-mean-square (RMS) error of 7 µɛ_rms compared to a reference strain on the surface, extrapolated from fiber-optic sensors embedded within the bridge structure. The field tests on an existing crack showed that the sensing sheet can track the early-stage damage growth, where it sensed 600 µɛ peak strain, whereas the nearby sensors on a damage-free surface did not observe significant strain change.