Associate Professor Michael Cullinan in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin received a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) award to lead the research project “SENSE Embedded, Chipless RFID Sensors for Structural Health Monitoring of Additively Manufactured Parts” to develop multifunctional metal parts with embedded sensing systems for integrated structural health monitoring.
To do this, researchers will embed chipless radio frequency identification (RFID) strain and temperature sensors directly into additively manufactured parts.
The project brings together Co-PI’s from across UT with varied technical expertise from the fields of resonant sensor systems (Michael Cullinan), wireless communications systems (Sensen Li, ECE), LPBF of structural parts (Joe Beaman, ME), MCS of insulators and electrical traces (Desi Kovar, ME), structural health monitoring (Salvatore Salamone, CAEE), and systems integration (David Leigh, ME) to develop and test the functional prototypes for this program.
If successful, the project will push the fundamental limits of manufacturing and sensor science and could open many new possibilities for cutting-edge defense technologies. The project is housed UT-Center for Electromechanics for Electromechanics, an applied research center at the University with a 50-year history of prototype development for stakeholders such as the United States Department of Defense.
Reposted from UT Austin Defense Research Advancement: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ut-austin-dra_associate-professor-michael-cullinan-in-the-activity-7224421194299490304-9UuC/
