| Summary: | The purpose of this report is to outline the experiments undertaken to study the
feasibility of introducing a conductive strip to act as a sensor for structural health
monitoring in composites. This method could potentially monitor large areas of a
structure in real time. The first phase of experiments involved characterizing the
EPOCYLTM NC E-128-02 resin (E resin) as well as determining the suitability of the
resin for the project. The second phase of experiments involved designing a screen to
print long strips of E resin and silver ink onto the glass fibres. The last phase of
experiments involved testing the panels under simple loading conditions i.e. tensile
test.
The E Resin proved to have a viscosity too low to be suitable for printing on the
cured glass fabric panel. Moreover, it has a very high resistivity that hindered
resistance measurements by the Multimeter. Therefore, the silver ink was selected as
the printing ink. It was found that the resistance was proportional to the strain
experienced by the strip. Using this relationship, we can monitor the health of the
strip by constantly measuring the resistance.
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