Flexible polymer-based sensors for structural health monitoring in renewable energy-generating devices

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A Wave Energy Converter (WEC) harvests clean and green energy from ocean waves. Traditionally, they use multiple rigid bodies, but there is significant cost potential from use of flexible membranes (mWEC) as the main interaction with the waves. Survivability and reliability of these highly deformable membrane structures is a key concern. An mWEC operating underwater experiences multiple modes of deformations (tension, compression, bending/twisting; in- and out-of-plane deformations) during its service life. Hence, ensuring reliability of membrane structures through constant health monitoring in damage-prone areas using stretchable sensors is an ideal choice. However, the integration of stretchable sensors in mWEC face several challenges, i) design of multi-modal sensor networks that can simultaneously capture in-and out-of-plane deformations, ii) arrangements of sensor electronics in submerged conditions and iii) experimental validation of sensor' responses mimicking sub-sea conditions using a recently purchased multi-axial test rig. The sensors will also be applied to monitoring wind turbine blades. We will address the aforementioned scientific challenges in this project.