Utilizing and testing a self-monitored 3D MEMS strain sensor for SHM of mining and pipeline structures

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In northern Alberta, oil sands mining have become one of the major industries that support the Albertan and Canadian economy. Many of the Canadian oil and gas and mining companies like Syncrude Canada would like to extend the lifetime and reduce the maintenance cost of its oil sands mining and transportation equipment and facilities through predicting only structural parts that are prone to failure. Some of the critical equipment used in oil sand exploration are shovel boom, shovel buckets, truck boxes, and truck frames and processing and transportation pipelines. Metal foil strain gauges are currently the standard sensing component used to monitor strain levels on such structures to indicate a critical condition that needs maintenance. Although foil strain gauges have been successfully used for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), they have disadvantages related to their high cost, high power consumption, and complexity of installation and accessibility; thus, not suitable to be adopted as industrial IoTs for SHM. There is a need for an alternative technique that can address these drawbacks especially providing an easy and quick installation that can withstand the harsh environmental conditions such as dusty environment, moisture, large temperature variation, and severe vibration. The current advancement in micro and Nano-electro mechanical systems (M/NEMS) and semiconductors provides a promising alternative which can integrate a semiconductor strain gauge, circuitry, and wireless module in a small micro-packaged chip for easy installation and connectivity. The objective of this project is to develop a MEMS-based strain sensor that can be deployed for SHM of oil sands mining equipment. It is a collaborative effort between the University of Alberta (UofA) and Syncrude Canada. This phase builds on the success achieved in an earlier collaborative work to build a 3D MEMS-based in-plane strain sensor platform for SSHM of mining and oil and gas equipment in Canada.