A SELF POWERED TAG FOR WIRELESS STRUCTURE HEALTH MONITORING IN AERONAUTICAL APPLICATIONS

This paper reports a self powered smart tag consisting of a vibration energy harvester, the power conditioning circuit, sensors and a RF transmitter for wireless structural health monitoring (SHM) in aeronautical applications. The smart tag has dimensions similar to a credit card and aims to be integrated into the surface of the aircraft. The smart tag is powered by an integrated bimorph piezoelectric generator that extracts energy from ambient vibrations at the frequency of 67Hz and the amplitude of 0.4g (3.9ms-2). The generator is fabricated using thick film printing technology. Experimentally, the generator produced the maximum RMS output power of 181uW which is sufficient to enable periodic sensing and transmission. Description of the smart tag as well as the experimental results of the piezoelectric generator are presented.