Abstract
As the rapid development of high-end intelligent equipment continues, the design requirements for crack and strain monitoring equipment are increasing daily. In this paper, a decoupled monitoring method for strain and cracks based on a multilayer patch antenna sensor is studied. First, the monitoring principle for strain and crack decoupling is analyzed. Second, the design method for the multilayer patch antenna sensor is studied, and the hierarchical arrangement, patch size, substrate layer thickness, and feeding line structure are designed on the basis of this method. A quarter-wavelength impedance converter is designed to perform impedance matching and optimize the resonant frequency information. The effects of strain and crack propagation on the resonant frequency of the patch antenna are analyzed through simulations, and the decoupled monitoring method for the structural stress state and crack propagation is discussed. Lastly, the feasibility of decoupled monitoring of strain and cracks is verified experimentally. The results of the theoretical analysis, simulations, and experiments show that the proposed patch antenna sensor based on the multilayer structure can realize decoupled monitoring of strain and cracks in the structure, and the sensor has broad application prospects.
Highlights
The multilayer patch antenna sensor realizes decoupling of the cracks and strain from the structure, and strain and crack monitoring can be carried out simultaneously, i.e., the lower patch is used for crack monitoring and the upper patch is used for strain identification; in addition, cracks have no effect on the upper patch, and the influence of strain on the lower patch is compensated for slightly using the strain measured via the upper layer
This section begins by presenting the crack testing and strain identification performances of the patch antenna sensor; micro-compensation research based on the crack test results is carried out using the test strain, and the crack and strain decoupling performance of the multilayer patch antenna sensor is verified
A decoupled monitoring method for strain and cracks based on use of a multilayer patch antenna sensor was studied
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Sanders studied the effects of temperature on the resonant frequency of these antennas as a function of the relationships among the dielectric constant of the microstrip antenna substrate, the physical size of the radiation patch, and the operating temperature, and the microstrip patch antenna was used as the temperature sensor for their research [13]. When patch antenna sensors are applied in structural health monitoring under complex working conditions, the problem of multiple physical field coupling and decoupling must be faced first. Wang et al introduced a new type of radiofrequency heating device composed of an antenna array, and the device’s temperature distribution was calculated as a function of the coupling relationship between the electromagnetic field and the temperature field [17] These studies essentially form the basic research on the antenna multi-physical field and were used to improve the radiation performance of the patch antenna. The resonant frequency shift for the lower layer patch caused by the structural stress is much smaller than that caused by the crack, and the lower layer patch crack monitoring information can be compensated for slightly using the test strain from the upper layer patch to realize decoupling of the crack information and the strain information from the structure using the multi-resonator model
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