SBIR Phase I: A Wireless Polyvinylidene Flouride (PVDF) Strain Sensor for Infrastructure Monitoring

*9761157王这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目旨在开发一种主动应变计，以直接满足新一代传感器技术的要求。利用传感器监测结构在地震作用下的性能对减轻地震灾害具有重要意义。现有的箔式和光纤式应变计，由于其激励和信号调节相对昂贵，需要很长的导线才能到达询问点，对功率的要求很高，所有这些都使得测量大型民用结构的成本高得令人望而却步。选择聚偏氟乙烯(PVDF)等活性材料作为应变计，在信号处理要求、低功率要求、低噪声阈值方面提供了基本优势，最重要的是消除了使用导线来询问应变计的能力。本研究的目的是验证PVDF应变仪的概念，并为开发真正的自给式无线应变仪铺平道路。潜在的商业应用将在基础设施监测领域。选择PVDF将为传感器提供相对便宜的材料，传感器的有源特性将有助于保持基本信号处理的设计相当简单，这将导致低成本的信号处理，这将容易与射频电路集成。***

*** 9761157 Wang This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to develop an active strain gauge, to directly address the requirements of a new generation of sensor technology. Monitoring the performance of structures during earthquakes using sensors is very important for earthquake hazard mitigation. Existing strain gauges, both the foil and fiber-optic types, with their excitation and signal conditioning are relatively expensive, require long lead wires to get to the interrogating point, have high power requirements, all of which makes instrumenting a large civil structure prohibitively expensive. The choice of an active material such as polyvinylidede flouride (PVDF) as a strain gauge provides basic advantages in terms of the signal processing requirements, low power requirements, low noise threshold, and above all the ability to eliminate the usage of lead wires to interrogate the gauge. The objectives of the current research is to prove the concept of a PVDF strain gauge and pave the way for the development a true self contained wireless strain gauge. The potential commercial applications will be in the area of infrastructure monitoring. The choice of PVDF will provide a relatively inexpensive material for the sensor, The active nature of the sensor will help in keeping the design of the basic signal processing rather simple, which will result in a low cost signal processing which will be easy to integrate with a RF circuit. ***