With the PDR deadline approaching,  we dedicated this week to test all the potential detection methods. We eliminated optical laser detection earlier in the week because carbon fiber was too absorbent to identify any intrusions’ reliability. From the equipment we were able to access and know how to use, we were able to design a DIY parallel plate capacitor and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) device to test capacitance sensing methods of detection.

Since most of the methods we are testing are highly specialized in electrical engineering, we seek the help of Dr. Erin Patrick. During our meeting with Dr. Patrick, we discussed simple capacitive measurement methods with pulsed current or voltage sources that we can easily integrate into a simple portable device. We were then introduced to Dr. Mark Orazem to get more insight and help with EIS measurements of sample prepreg with and without defects to understand the capacitive nature of the systems better.

At the end of the week, we constructed a preliminary test experiment with unidirectional and woven prepreg (half side with the defect and half with no defect). We would like to thank Dr. Peter Ifju (our coach) for supplying us with the prepreg material for this experiment. Next week we plan on creating a product architecture, finishing the PDR report, narrowing down detection methods due to budget constraints, and continuing lab testing of capacitance sensing methods.