Stiefvater, JasonKang, Yuhongde Clerck, AlbreyMao, ShuoJones, NoahDeem, JoshWicks, AlfredRuan, HangNg, Wing2024-03-122024-03-122024-03-02Stiefvater, J.; Kang, Y.; de Clerck, A.; Mao, S.; Jones, N.; Deem, J.; Wicks, A.; Ruan, H.; Ng, W. Dual-Use Strain Sensors for Acoustic Emission and Quasi-Static Bending Measurements. Sensors 2024, 24, 1637.https://hdl.handle.net/10919/118314In 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.application/pdfenCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 Internationalacoustic emissionMEMSstrain sensorsource locationquasi-static plate bendingArticle - Refereed2024-03-12https://doi.org/10.3390/s24051637