A COMPOSITE SANDWICH STRUCTURE WITH EMBEDDED MEMS-BASED VIBRATION SENSING

This paper presents a sandwich composite architecture suitable for embedding MEMS-based accelerometers for long-term vibration monitoring or to act as sensors in adaptive structures. The presented architecture is designed around multi-axis accelerometers and temperature sensors that are commercially available. These devices also integrate sophisticated sensor compensation and data acquisition hardware into a single integrated circuit chip package. The paper presents the stiffiiess modeling of a sandwich composite with embedded accelerometers based on classical lamination theory. The first order shear deformation theory is used to compute the free vibration response of the sandwich composite. Solutions are presented for the free-vibration response of the sandwich beam under fixed-free boundary conditions. Results presented also include the response obtained from the MEMS-accelerometer when coupled to a thick cross-ply laminate under fixed-free boundary conditions.