Embedded Temperature and Anti-Icing Monitoring Systems Directly Printed on 3D Shaped Substrates

Abstract

The field of machine health and system monitoring has gained interest in different application fields, e.g., monitoring of lubricants, vibrations, surroundings, environmental conditions or the temperature of critical machine parts. This work presents two different condition monitoring devices, which are fabricated in a low cost printing process directly on the non-planar surface of the object to be monitored. The first system is used for thermal condition monitoring, where temperature monitoring is performed by 24 thermocouples resulting in a 24 pixel temperature image of the sample. The thermocouples are printed in an array arrangement, which enables the reduction of the required electrical connections from 48 to 25. The second device is intended for the use in aerodynamic systems, e.g., airplane wings, rotor blades of wind turbines, and helicopters where icing is a critical issue. The aerodynamic lift of aircraft is critically influenced by deposits on the wing or rotor blade surface. Also in other rotor blade systems, e.g., wind turbines the efficiency is drastically dropped and in worst case the icing can cause the failure of the system. The aim is the fabrication of an active monitoring system which is able to detect and also remove the ice from the monitored surface. To this end the system is directly fabricated on the 3D shaped substrate like a wing or rotor blade and the icing is detected using a capacitive sensor and a thermocouple sensor array. In case of icing a heater removes the critical ice deposit.