Feb. 20, 2014
Jandro Abot, a clinical associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded a Fulbright US Scholar Grant to do research abroad, as part of the Fulbright-Brazil Scientific Mobility Program in Nanotechnology and New Materials. Abot's project, "Miniature Piezo-Impedance Sensors for Structural Health Monitoring Using Carbon Nanotube Yarn," will bring new light onto the use of Carbon Nanotube (CNT) yarn in miniature piezoimpedance sensors to measure strain, pressure, acceleration, and other variables in components and structures. CNTs have superior mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties and are grown in arrays that can be drawn into a web and further twisted into fiber-like yarns containing thousands of carbon nanotubes in their cross-sections. These carbon nanotube yarns exhibit piezoimpedance, which has been tapped by Abot and his research group to develop integrated and distributed structural health monitoring techniques to monitor strain and damage in polymers and composite materials. Abot will spend the next two summers in Brazil studying models to govern the responses of piezoimpedance-based sensors consisting of CNT yarn and testing their validity in prototype miniature sensors that measure strain, pressure or acceleration. He will also offer seminars and colloquiums on CNT-based sensors and composite materials at two Brazilian universities. Abot will be hosted in Brazil by Emilio C. Nelli Silva, professor and chair of the Department of Mechatronics and Mechanical Systems at the Universidade de São Paulo, the highest ranked university in Latin America. He will work on the research with American and Brazilian students.