Self-powered wireless impedance sensing for structural health monitoring

Structural damage is often accompanied by equipment failures and safety incidents. For example, aircraft accidents often result from wing breaks and landing gear damage. The self-powered wireless sensing technology is ideal tool for monitoring structural health in multi-locations. In this work, we designed an airflow-driven energy harvester (EH) and integrate into wireless impedance sensing system. Also, the Energy Management and control Circuit (EMC) is designed to provide a stable DC voltage for intermittently driven sensing system. The experimental results show that the self-powered impedance sensing system can operate at every 3 min at a wind speed of 8 m/s. The system error is within 5% compared to the Agilent 4294A (Precision Impedance Analyzer) and the characteristics of the material cracks could be successfully detected and analyzed.