Self-Powered Helicopter Health Monitoring Sensor

The initial component design and system concept of a self-contained, self-powered wireless sensor for structural health monitoring of helicopter systems is presented. The sensor node contains the components to sense and transmit data wirelessly to an on-board receiver. The sensor is self-powered by a meandered piezoelectric vibration energy harvester designed harvest maximal power at the low vibration frequencies present in helicopters. The harvester implements a strain-matched electrode design, which avoids charge cancellation that occurs in a single electrode meander design, and improves power output by 5x over a single-electrode design. A robust, hermetically-packaged MEMS temperature sensor has also been designed, fabricated, and tested. The sensor consists of a thermal SiO2/Au bimorph and sensing electrode pair which have a temperature dependent capacitance.