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Description
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The demand for flexible, low-cost, and lightweight sensors is increasing, particularly for structural health monitoring in harsh environments exposed to temperature fluctuations and mechanical strain. Inkjet printing, an additive manufacturing technique for electronics, offers lowcost fabrication with high spatial resolution. In this work, we present strain sensors fabricated by inkjet-printing silver onto flexible Kapton substrates. The sensing grid is protected from the environment by a polymeric encapsulant. The sensors exhibit a linear increase in resistance with increasing strain, with gauge factor values ranging from 1.40 to 1.80 recorded over a temperature range of −40 to 100 ○C. Furthermore, we demonstrate the applicability of these sensors for monitoring the mechanical deformation of a propellant tank with an aluminum liner. The strain sensor was printed directly onto the Kapton, which was pre-glued on a curved surface (tank). To compensate for temperature effects, two strain gauges, i.e., one aligned in the hoop direction and the other in the axial direction, were connected in a half-Wheatstone bridge configuration. A linear increase in output voltage with rising internal pressure up to 50 bar was observed, confirming the potential of inkjet-printed sensors for direct integration into structural health monitoring systems. (2025-01-01)
***This entry has been automatically imported via Infodoc(ASO) CSV by LIST harvest scripts. *** (2026-06-09)
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