Wireless, In Situ Guided Wave Structural Health Monitoring System with a Power Harvesting Rectenna

Structural integrity is a vital issue for mission success. Various defects such as metal cracks, corrosion, composite fiber breakage and delamination at critical loading areas, if not detected and repaired in time, may lead to a catastrophic system failure. Traditional inspection methods are limited to a point-by-point manner and very time consuming. Erection of scaffolding or disassembly of the structures is often needed to inspect the interior and inaccessible components. We propose a wireless in-situ guided wave health monitoring system. It consists of very small, low cost guided wave leave-in-place health monitoring sensors known as piezo-disks, an innovative Correlation Analysis Technique (CAT) for fast defect sizing and localization, a miniaturized local computing device with on-board pulsing, multi-channel data acquisition and processing capabilities, and a conformal microwave rectenna for wireless powering the in-situ system for remote monitoring. The envisioned system can inspect a relatively large area, instantaneously provide reliable and quantitative data such as defect location and severity levels; minimize and eventually eliminate the need for structural disassembly, and be able to communicate wirelessly and remotely to the maintenance personnel. The projected total cost of this system will be less than $3000.