Research Projects

The study focuses on the development of a soft strain sensor system for monitoring the shape and health of morphing structures, such as aircraft, UAVs, solar sails, inflatable wings, and planetary balloons. The sensors must be compliant, conformably integrated on the target's surfaces, and can transduce mechanical force to electrical output. The sensors should remain sensitive under constant and dynamic deformation to accurately obtain a distributed strain map of the structure's surface. Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) optical sensors have been used for such measurements, but their size and cost make them insufficient for real-time monitoring. The FRAMME project aims to develop a strain measurement system that can be deployed over morphing structures for shape and health monitoring, minimizing delamination effects between sensors and structure surface and cross-sensitivities. The project is interdisciplinary, combining advanced research fields from aerospace, manufacturing, and nanotechnology. The results can be applied to wearable electronics, deformable displays, and soft robotics, as soft sensing systems are at the core of next-generation devices. The multidisciplinary approach will provide incentives for future investigations implementing soft sensors at the system level, an area of significant scientific interest to the scientific community in India and beyond.