Enhancing the Self-Sensing Capability of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer
Supervisor: Dr. Wael Abuzaid
Carbon-Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRPs) are electrically conductive due to the carbon fibers. This means that changes in their electrical conductivity could be measured and correlated to the composite element’s deformation and possibly, predict the onset of fracture. However, the electrical response of CFRPs is non-linear with respect to the applied load and shows no identifiable predictors of fracture.
By impregnating the polymer matrix with either graphene nanotubes (GNPs) or Milled Carbon-Fibers (MCF), the electrical response of CFRPs improved significantly, becoming more linearly correlated with load and clearly identifying the formation of cracks preceding total fracture through abrupt changes in linearity.
This promising result has applications in structural health monitoring since CFRPs are well-known to fail in a brittle and unpredictable manner with catastrophic consequences for critical applications.
Manuscript Availability: Publicly available here.
Data Availability: Available upon request.
Caged Quadrotor Drone for Inspection of Central HVAC Ducts (BSc. Capstone Project)
Collaborators:
Ahmed Borik, Wisaam Farhat (Dept. of Electrical Engineering)
Alif Kallangodan (Dept. of Mechanical Engineering)
Supervisors:
Dr. Mohammad A. Jaradat, Dr. Shayok Mukhopadhyay, Dr. Mamoun Abdel-Hafez
HVAC ducts are notoriously difficult to maintain. Once constructed and commissioned, leaks and blockages become challenging to identify and locate, leading to continuous losses in energy and efficiency. While there exist commercial solutions in the form of robots, they have to be tethered with wires since the inside of a duct acts as a Faraday cage that blocks all radio and wireless signals that would have allowed remote control of a duct-inspecting robot. Further, existing solutions only cannot ascend vertical ducts and only move in horizontal ducts. Moreover, they do not carry external sensors other than an RGB camera, and, therefore, cannot detect defects that aren’t in the camera view.
The proposed solution is a drone equipped with not only a camera but also a proximity sensor to detect blockages and a thermal camera to detect thermal leaks. The drone can switch from remote-controlled (RC) mode to autonomous mode at the loss of the radio signal. To increase energy efficiency and prevent damage to the duct or drone rotors due to accidental collision, the drone is housed in a cylindrical cage to roll inside instead of continuously hovering while navigating a horizontal duct.
This award-winning work was a multi-disciplinary effort between senior students in the Departments of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, and I’m proud to have been mutually responsible, along with my colleague, Alif Kallangodan, for the design, 3D printing, and assembly of the drone housing.
Manuscript Availability: Publicly available here.
Software/Code Availability: To allow for the possible commercialization of the research findings, software or code has not been made available.
Arwa Abougharib 