Affiliations: [a] The Aeronautic Key Laboratory for Smart Materials and
Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 29# Yu Dao
Street, Nanjing, 210016 P.R. China
Abstract: This paper presents a dedicated wireless sensor node for strain
distribution monitoring, three functional modules are designed respectively,
including sensor input unit, processing core, and wireless communication. The
multi-channel strain gauge signal conditioning circuit is designed on the
sensor input unit for multi-point strain distribution monitoring requirement
and proved to be accurate and reliable. A miniature, lightweight, and
shock-proof aluminum encapsulation is also designed especially for aerospace
structural health monitoring (SHM) application. To verify the functionality of
the designed wireless sensor node for SHM capability, a multi-point strain
distribution monitoring system is developed on a aircraft carbon fiber
reinforced plastic (CFRP) wing box. The strain gauges array is stuck to the
inner surface of the CFRP wainscot and used to monitoring multi-point strain
distribution. The reliable wireless sensor network is deployed adopting the
designed wireless sensor nodes to gather, process, and transmit strain gauges
signals and monitoring results. An embedding pattern matching method and a
directed diffusion routing algorithm are developed to monitor the strain
distribution successfully for the actual big CFRP wainscot.
