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, and stress-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, and “smart” data interpretation are highly advantageous. Due to their 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 can incorporate the above sensor functionalities and support data collection would help address life cycle cost and operational effectiveness issues concerning many military assets/equipment. The primary objectives of Phase I are to evaluate the feasibility (and merit) of using MEMS technologies and manufacturing processes to develop such a multi-sensor module, and provide an initial specification for a MEMS based device with appropriate capabilities.