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Browsing by Author "Jones, Noah"

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    Dual-Use Strain Sensors for Acoustic Emission and Quasi-Static Bending Measurements
    Stiefvater, Jason; Kang, Yuhong; de Clerck, Albrey; Mao, Shuo; Jones, Noah; Deem, Josh; Wicks, Alfred; Ruan, Hang; Ng, Wing (MDPI, 2024-03-02)
    In this paper, a MEMS piezoresistive ultrathin silicon membrane-based strain sensor is presented. The sensor’s ability to capture an acoustic emission signal is demonstrated using a Hsu–Nielsen source, and shows comparable frequency content to a commercial piezoceramic ultrasonic transducer. To the authors’ knowledge, this makes the developed sensor the first known piezoresistive strain sensor which is capable of recording low-energy acoustic emissions. The improvements to the nondestructive evaluation and structural health monitoring arise from the sensor’s low minimum detectable strain and wide-frequency bandwidth, which are generated from the improved fabrication process that permits crystalline semiconductor membranes and advanced polymers to be co-processed, thus enabling a dual-use application of both acoustic emission and static strain sensing. The sensor’s ability to document quasi-static bending is also demonstrated and compared with an ultrasonic transducer, which provides no significant response. This dual-use application is proposed to effectively combine the uses of both strain and ultrasonic transducer sensor types within one sensor, making it a novel and useful method for nondestructive evaluations. The potential benefits include an enhanced sensitivity, a reduced sensor size, a lower cost, and a reduced instrumentation complexity.