On Wednesday, November 12, 2014, Dr. Jandro Abot visited AME for a seminar presentation. His seminar presentation was titled, “Self-Sensing Composite Materials Using Carbon Nanotube Yarns: A New Paradigm in Structural Health Monitoring.”
Abstract: Composite materials are widely used in aerospace structures and many applications because of their superior specific stiffness and strength respect to weight. However, monitoring their structural health still remains too complex and difficult to implement in an integrated and distributed manner. This presentation is about integrated structural health monitoring in polymeric and composite materials using carbon nanotube yarns. Carbon nanotubes are grown into arrays that can be drawn into webs and further twisted into yarns that contain thousands of carbon nanotubes in their cross-sections. These carbon nanotube yarns are lightweight, stiff, strong, ductile and electrically conductive fiber-like materials that we are studying as piezoimpedance-based sensors. The proven concept of real-time, integrated, and widely distributed damage detection and strain measurement using carbon nanotube yarn sensors is presented including the latest experimental results. The coupled mechanical, electrical and thermal response of the carbon nanotube yarns is of significant importance for their use as sensors and recently obtained results are presented including a not-before observed negative piezoresistance response. The effect of composition and structure of the carbon nanotube yarns on that coupled response is also discussed. The present challenges and proposed approaches for robust real-time structural health monitoring that eventually leads to condition-based maintenance are outlined for aerospace structures and other components, devices, and structures.
Dr. Jandro Abot is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Director of the Intelligent Materials Laboratory, and Director of International Engineering Program Development of the School of Engineering at The Catholic University of America. He was previously an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Cincinnati. Prior to that, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University where he had received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. Dr. Abot also holds a 6-year degree in Structural Engineering from the Universidad de la República in Montevideo, Uruguay. Dr. Abot’s expertise is on the science and technology of composite materials and structural health monitoring of structures using carbon nanotube-based sensors. Dr. Abot authored or co-authored one hundred journal and proceeding papers and led research projects sponsored by AFOSR, NASA, and Fulbright and collaborated on projects sponsored by NSF, ONR, and industrial consortiums. Dr. Abot taught nineteen different engineering courses in Solid Mechanics, Materials Engineering, Experimental Mechanics and Introduction to Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, always receiving very good students’ evaluations. Dr. Abot is always committed to advising many graduate students and mentoring undergraduate students in the framework of research projects, and actively engaged in many departmental and school service activities such as recruitment, accreditation and international programs.