Abstract
This paper describes new ideas the author has proposed to realize metal and polymer based sensitive structural material systems suitable for health monitoring without using commercially available sophisticated and expensive sensors. The following topics are mainly examined in this study: (1) Embedding a normal optical fiber in aluminum based materials such as SiC fiber reinforced aluminum composites to use as a sensor for fracture process monitoring; (2) forming an optical interference type strain sensor or an optical loss type strain sensor in host materials simply by embedding a singly or multiply notched optical fiber and breaking it at each notch in the host materials; (3) forming a multifunctional sensor in aluminum based materials for temperature and strain monitoring simply by embedding an oxidized nickel fiber in them.
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