Structural Self-Sensing Without Sensor Incorporation

Structural self-sensing refers to a structural material sensing itself without sensor incorporation. Compared to sensor incorporation, advantages include low cost, high durability, large sensing volume and the mechanical properties being not degraded. The self-sensing ability makes the structural material multifunctional. Structural self-sensing involving resistance measurement has been studied for decades, but recent work has extended it from resistance measurement to capacitance or inductance measurement. Resistance or inductance measurement is applicable only to conductive materials (e.g., carbon fiber composites), but capacitance measurement is broadly applicable to conductive and nonconductive materials. The effects of strain, damage or temperature on the resistivity/permittivity is the basis of resistance-based/capacitance-based sensing. The effects of fiber-fiber contact, fiber bending and current direction change on the inductance are the main basis of inductance-based sensing.

Chung is Professor in University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. She received her PhD degree in Materials Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is Member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of ASM International, and Fellow of American Carbon Society. She received the Pettinos Award from the American Carbon Society, and an Honorary Doctorate Degree from University of Alicante, Spain. She is ranked by the 2022 Stanford University study to be 13th among 315,721 materials scientists in the world (living and deceased), 10th among those that are living, and 1st among those that are female. Her Google Scholar h-index is 111, with 45,164 citations (as viewed on Oct. 29, 2023). Her publications include over 600 peer-reviewed journal articles.