SMART SYSTEM INTEGRATION – POTENTIALS AND CHALLENGES IN THE INTEGRATED CONDITION MONITORING OF LIGHTWEIGHT STRUCTURES

Abstract

In the field of mobile applications, the use of lightweight structures based on carbon fibres is increasing more and more. Due to its high fracture toughness, the material reacts to mechanical overloads usually with invisible initial damage, such as delamination, intermediate fibre breaks or fibre breaks, which can lead to failure of the component. Such damage substantially affects the structural integrity of the structure, which requires its detection, monitoring and repair. At present, such fracture behaviour of fibre composite structures can only be measured with great effort and usually requires long inspection times (e.g. computer tomography, infrared spectroscopy or destructive testing methods). The monitoring of the structural integrity in real time by means of material-integrated sensors and signal processing electronics is therefore imperative and requires novel material and technology concepts for the large-scale functionalization of fibre-reinforced composite structures.

Due to the laminate shell construction, high-performance composite structures based on fibre-reinforcement allow the functionalization by sensors, actuators and microelectronics and thus an improvement in the performance and functional density of such lightweight structures. Continuously innovative manufacturing technologies for active systems based on micro- and nano-effects offer special advantages. These enable the integration of functional elements into textile-based, fibre-reinforced semi-finished products and preforms. In order to achieve a reliable integration of additional functional diversity, methods are being developed for the design and integration of active transducer elements in lightweight structures. For this purpose, a combination of in-situ and in-line processes is used, which includes the injection moulding process with functionalized polymer layers to apply electrical contact and mass printing processes.

In this contribution, concepts and strategies for the integration of sensors and their processing electronics into fibre-reinforced lightweight structures will be presented and their challenges in technological implementation as well as their potentials in terms of resource saving will be demonstrated and discussed.