Description: TIAX proposes to develop lightweight, smart composite materials capable of sensing their own mechanical and thermal state. These composites will add functionality to structural materials used both in NASA missions and high-performance commercial applications. We will build on literature methods to sense strain, damage initiation and propagation, and temperature in composite materials to prepare, in a manner consistent with production-scale manufacturing and integration into real-world systems, multifunctional composites capable of reporting on their own health. These composites will be tested to ensure that their mechanical properties meet or exceed those of the base composite and to demonstrate that the embedded sensing capability accurately reports on composite health.

Benefits: The proposed self-sensing structural material is a critical component for many of NASA's deep space mission architectures and future programs. As outlined in NASA's Materials, Structure, Mechanical Systems, and Manufacturing Roadmap, multifunctional materials are vital to future active vehicle flight control systems and for providing real-time feedback about the strain and damage state of structures. In "real-time self-aware" vehicles, multifunctional materials will be used to identify, locate, and diagnosis the health of a structural component and trigger repair maintenance activities. Light-weight multifunctional composites will also contribute to NASA's long-term vision for Virtual Digital Fleet Leader (VDFL) and to the paradigm of greater system integration and autonomy without added mass or volume. Physics-based modeling and understanding in composite systems will also be aided by self-monitoring materials, allowing for the development of more efficient structural configurations and reduced reliance on physical testing. These advances will facilitate accelerated testing schedules, improved structural certification analysis, cost-effective system development and vehicle sustainment with less mass and more efficient designs. Most critically, multifunctional composite materials offer a light-weight, high performance route to ensuring the safety, reliability, integrity, and lifetime critical to mission success.

Multifunctional self-sensing composites will be valuable in any application where light weight and real time performance assessment allow longer operation between maintenances and operation closer to the edge of failure. In addition to the critical contribution to NASA space missions, the increasing adoption of high strength-to-weight composite materials in industries like transportation, energy, and defense, creates tremendous potential for this technology in a range of applications, including composite car bodies, wind turbines, and helicopter rotor blades.