Introduction to Sensors for Aerospace and Automotive Applications

Abstract

The sensors in aerospace and automotive industry play a vital role in navigation, detection, monitoring, and control of various systems related to ground and air vehicles. The sensors may be of analog or digital type which can be utilized at various places as per engineering requirements of the systems. The advancement in fabrication technologies related to such sensors has offered a wide variety of sensors ranging from nano to macroscopic length scales. Nowadays, sensors have not only become an important component to automate the production process and to perform record-keeping at different stages of manufacturing of ground and air vehicles but are also used to ensure the smooth functioning of systems by continuous monitoring of the prognostic behavior of the vehicles while in use. The sensors utilize different types of signal transduction mechanisms and signal conversion schemes for their working. A sensing device comprises of an analyte (external to device) detection and signal transduction to machine read the signals based on which closed-loop control can be carried out intelligently without human intervention. This book discusses about various types of sensors used in different sectors of aerospace and automotive industries. The book includes fabrication aspects of sensors based on MEMS technologies, talks about aircraft corrosion monitoring, wireless sensing networks, embedded sensors, and discusses about various sensors used in flying of air vehicles. The book also covers sensor especially used in different section of automotive industry like in assembly shop, during joining and welding, paint processes, etc.