All-printed smart structures: a viable option?

John O'Donnell; Farzad Ahmadkhanlou; Hwan-Sik Yoon; Gregory Washington

doi:10.1117/12.2045284

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10 March 2014 All-printed smart structures: a viable option?

John O'Donnell, Farzad Ahmadkhanlou, Hwan-Sik Yoon, Gregory Washington

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Proceedings Volume 9057, Active and Passive Smart Structures and Integrated Systems 2014; 905729 (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2045284
Event: SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring, 2014, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The last two decades have seen evolution of smart materials and structures technologies from theoretical concepts to physical realization in many engineering fields. These include smart sensors and actuators, active damping and vibration control, biomimetics, and structural health monitoring. Recently, additive manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing and printed electronics have received attention as methods to produce 3D objects or electronic components for prototyping or distributed manufacturing purposes. In this paper, the viability of manufacturing all-printed smart structures, with embedded sensors and actuators, will be investigated. To this end, the current 3D printing and printed electronics technologies will be reviewed first. Then, the plausibility of combining these two different additive manufacturing technologies to create all-printed smart structures will be discussed. Potential applications for this type of all-printed smart structures include most of the traditional smart structures where sensors and actuators are embedded or bonded to the structures to measure structural response and cause desired static and dynamic changes in the structure.

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John O'Donnell, Farzad Ahmadkhanlou, Hwan-Sik Yoon, and Gregory Washington "All-printed smart structures: a viable option?", Proc. SPIE 9057, Active and Passive Smart Structures and Integrated Systems 2014, 905729 (10 March 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2045284

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