Battery and Structural Health Monitoring

Battery Health Monitoring (BHM)

The evolution of rechargeable battery technologies attributes to several electrical and energy storage applications development. However, degradation of the batteries is an inevitable phenomenon limiting the lifetime in electrical applications. To remedy the sudden failure of a battery or poorly functional battery, BMH is in urgent need for electrical applications. SACL utilized acoustic-ultrasonic wave-based framework across multi-physic domains to develop advanced sensors for BHM. SACL demonstrated the feasibility of monitoring state of charge (SoC) and state of health (SoH) of lithium-ion pouch batteries and battery integrated composite structures (BICS) with acoustic-ultrasonic guided waves.

By utilizing SACL’s experience in sensing and diagnostic/prognostic technologies for structural health monitoring (SHM), SACL focus to develop a framework to correlate electrochemically induced changes in mechanical properties such as electrode moduli, densities, stresses and strains to battery state of health (SoH) and state of charge (SoC). By using different sensing modalities, such as ultrasonic wave propagation, and strain and temperature measurements, due to the intrinsic physical changes of an electrochemical system undergoing charging and discharging cycles, aging, and degradation. In addition to the voltage and current data, the use of a multi-modal sensor network layer can provide rich supplementary information about the operating conditions and even the inherent physical changes in the cells during operation. They are useful for the prediction and estimation of MESC’s battery SoC and SoH as well as its structural integrity state.

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM)

Structural health monitoring with embedded sensors can monitor the material damage state of the structure and predict the remaining life. SHM allows: an optimal use of the structure, minimized downtime, the avoidance of catastrophic failure, drastically changes the cost of maintenance. SACL aim to develop reliable SHM system for human intervention. Development and assessment of real-time capability in terms of sensing, modeling, diagnostics and prognostics. SACL focus on implementing a built-in sensor network to the structure, crucial information regarding the condition, damage state, and service environment of the structure can be obtained. The sensor network permanently embedded inside the composite structures can be used with either active sensing or passive sensing to monitor the health condition of a structure throughout its lifetime. SACL provides revolutionary SHM solution for determining the integrity of structures involving the use of multidisciplinary fields including sensors, materials, signal processing, system integration, and signal interpretation.