A MEMS Multi-sensor Suite for Prognostic Health Monitoring Applications in Military Systems

The ability to monitor the health of military assets/equipment, to know their history, and to estimate their condition and/or useful life is an important issue for military planners. A key aspect of such heath monitoring (HM) concepts is a system that can sense, record, and store the history data of environmental exposures of an asset over its lifetime. Environmental parameters of most interest include temperature, relative humidity, inertial shock, vibration, and strain. Such systems ideally require sensors that: are very small, utilize little power, operate in extreme environments, are maintenance free, and are low cost. Sensors with additional integrated functionalities such as data storage, smart data interpretation, and wireless/wired communications are highly advantageous. Due to inherent size, flexibility, and scalability advantages, Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System (MEMS) based sensor technologies are strong candidates for HM systems. An integrated MEMS multi-sensor module that incorporates the above functionalities would help address life cycle cost and operational effectiveness issues concerning many military assets/equipment. Phase I demonstrated the feasibly of a proposed technology through modeling and the demonstration of prototype HM modules. The Phase II efforts will focus on improving Phase I developed hardware designs, implementing additional features, reducing the overall size of the complete HM module using advanced electronics integration technologies, and demonstrating prototype devices.