Preliminary Findings on the Size Dependence of Sensing Skin Damage Detection Resolution

Abstract

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the development of large-area sensors for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). These sensors have a wide range of applications in monitoring civil and mechanical structures. A class of these sensors that are commonly referred to as sensing skin, consist of a thin layer of electrically conductive materials, e.g., electrically-conductive paints or films. These sensors can be installed on the surface of the structure or embedded within materials. Damage to the structure results in a local conductivity change of the sensing skin. The spatial and temporal distribution of conductivity of the sensing skin is reconstructed using Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT), enabling characterization of the damage. In small sizes, in the order of a several inches, the sensing skin technology has been very successful in localizations and quantification of damage in terms of conductivity change. There remains the question, however, as whether the performance of sensing skin is affected by increasing its size. This paper reports the preliminary results of testing the feasibility of a large scale (1.22 m 1.22 m) for damage detection. Further, we study computationally and experimentally the damage detection resolution of the large scale sensing skin