CAREER: Inverse Mechanics in Self-Sensing Materials: Basic Knowledge, Education, and Service

该学院早期职业发展项目（Career）支持自传感材料中反向机电耦合的研究。机械自传感概念在机器人、结构传感、医疗保健和康复等领域得到了广泛的研究。尽管这些材料中的机电耦合是众所周知的，但自传感材料的潜在消费者通常对电性能不感兴趣。他们更愿意知道引起观察到的电变化的机械变形和损伤。通过倒置这些材料中的电变化和机械载荷之间的关系，仅通过少量的电测量就可以了解全场力学。这项研究将发现这个逆问题的基本性质，这将导致更准确、更健壮和更快的解决方案。普渡大学也将建立一个自我感知的力学教育和推广生态系统。这项工作将利用与女性工程师协会和女性工程项目的联系，将自我感知力学整合到服务于更大的拉斐特/西拉斐特地区的外展活动中。在技术工作的基础上，还将创建一个垂直集成项目计划。该计划将通过提供研究机会和指导网络，对不同的本科生群体产生积极影响。此计划的参与者将通过参与计划的外展活动获得服务学习经验。迄今为止，电-机械耦合的反相方法在很大程度上尚未得到研究。先前的工作表明，从电数据中恢复全场力学是一个不适定的反问题，但基本力学尚未纳入反问题。这项工作旨在通过包含新的基于力学的约束、先进的正则化和结构先验以及传感器数据融合概念，使机械自感知逆问题稳定和良好定态。如果成功，这项研究将通过简单、良性、容易复用的电测量，创造第一个原位定量全场力学成像的智能途径。因为许多材料，无论是自然产生的还是工程制造的，都表现出自我感知的特性，这一基本知识可以对人类健康、社会繁荣和国家安全的广泛领域产生积极影响。例子包括软体机器人和变形结构中的形状感知、高能材料中超快速加载的可视化、老化基础设施中的损伤映射，以及用于疾病检测的组织刚度映射。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) supports research on inverting electro-mechanical coupling in self-sensing materials. Mechanical self-sensing concepts have been widely studied in diverse applications including robotics, structural sensing, healthcare and rehabilitation. Even though electro-mechanical coupling in these materials is well known, potential consumers of self-sensing materials are generally not interested in electrical properties. They would much rather know the mechanical deformation and damage that gives rise to an observed electrical change. By inverting the relationship between electrical changes and mechanical loading in these materials, it is possible to know the full-field mechanics from only a small number of electrical measurements. This research will discover the basic nature of this inverse problem, which will lead to more accurate, more robust, and faster solutions. A self-sensing mechanics education and outreach ecosystem will also be created at Purdue University. The work will leverage connections with the Society of Women Engineers and the Women in Engineering Program to integrate self-sensing mechanics into outreach activities serving the greater Lafayette/West Lafayette area. A Vertically Integrated Projects program will also be created based on the technical work. This program will positively impact a diverse cohort of undergraduate students by providing research opportunities and a mentoring network. Participants in this program will receive service-learning experience by contributing to the planned outreach activities.To date, methods for inverting electro-mechanical coupling have been largely unstudied. Prior work has shown that recovering full-field mechanics from electrical data is an ill-posed inverse problem, but basic mechanics have not yet been incorporated into the inverse problem. This work seeks to make the mechanical self-sensing inverse problem stable and well-posed through the inclusion of novel mechanics-based constraints, advanced regularization and structural priors, and sensor data fusion concepts. If successful, this research will create the first intellectual pathway to in-situ quantitative full-field mechanics imaging via simple, benign, and easily multiplexed electrical measurements. Because many materials, both naturally occurring and engineered, exhibit self-sensing properties, this basic knowledge can positively affect broad areas of human health, societal prosperity, and national security. Examples include shape awareness in soft robots and morphing structures, visualization of ultra-fast loading in energetic materials, damage mapping in aging infrastructure, and, among others, tissue stiffness mapping for disease detection.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.