Capacitive Sensor for Production Monitoring
Recent trend of more complex geometry of FRC is causing increasing difficulties in composite manufacturing. A method to optimize the manufacturing process is to ensure and improve the quality of manufactured parts using cure monitoring based on capacitive sensors.
Capacitive sensor
Left: Schematic of a capacitive sensor; Right: the fabricated sensors.
- Sensor fabricated in-house by PCB technology
- Sensor monitors the complex permittivity of the GFRP in real time and in situ, which allows to identify different stages of the production process
- Sensor dimension: 13mm×11mm×68 µm
- Sensitivity determined by sensor geometry
Deformable microsystem
Because of the irregular 3D geometry of the composites, traditional flat sensor system is becoming unfavorable and non-practical for monitoring purpose. To accommodate the non-flat shape, the proposal is to interconnect non-deformable functional island, which contains the capacitive sensor for production monitoring, with meander-shaped deformable interconnections.
Left: Setup of a vacuum assisted resin infusion process;
Right: Deformable microsystem containing capacitive sensors is embedded.
- A vacuum assisted resin infusion process
- A microsystem containing capacitive and temperature sensors were embedded
- Meander-interconnects enables deformability