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Current and future research directions for micro- and nano-technologies applicable to the automotive sensor market are presented. Micro- and nano- based sensors are inherently small with high bandwidth and incredible sensitivity potential and can therefore used to measure the desired data directly (eg. force from road on wheel at wheel bearing) rather than inferring data by indirect measurement and data table lookup. The key to leveraging the capabilities of micro- and nano-systems is to control the interface between the microsystem and vehicle component, and/or the nanoscale device and the microscale packaging. The former interface is primarily responsible for device performance and the latter for processing and integration cost. To demonstrate these points, a number of micro- and nano-sensors, currently in development, are described and reviewed.

Shearography is an optical technique developed for full-field measurement of surface deformation. It has since been accepted by industry as a practical nondestructive testing technique for evaluating the structural integrity of components and structures. Qualitatively, shearography reveals flaws from flaw-induced, anomalous deformation in the component under inspection, and quantitatively, shearography assesses the detected flaws through back-calculation from the anomalous deformation. This paper demonstrates that, with the use of multiple-frequency acoustical excitation together with the time-integrated shearographic recording technique, rapid and automated assessment of the integrity of adhesive-bonded composite structures can be realized in the actual plant environment.

This paper presents an application of shearography, an optical method for full-field strain measurement, for evaluating residual stresses in plastic/composite components. The approach is based on measuring the change in slope of the component surface, which is caused by the release of residual stresses, in the vicinity of a small, shallow blind-hole or of a small indentation made on the underside of the component during testing. The severity of slope-change, and hence the fringe density, gives a measure of the residual stresses in the component. This method does not require laborious mounting of strain gages or transducers whose stiffness could affect the accuracy of measurements, and is therefore practical for use in both production and field environment.

A novel computer vision technique for rapid measurement of surface coordinates is presented. The technique is based on the marriage of a digital fringe projection technique and a fringe-phase extraction algorithm. A digitally controlled video signal in the form of linear and parallel fringes of cosinusoidal intensity variation is projected onto an object. The fringe pattern is perturbed by the three-dimensional object surface with fringe-phase containing information on the depth of the object. A phase extraction algorithm is used to determine the fringe-phase distribution, from which the three-dimensional surface coordinates are determined. The theoretical basis of this technique and some experimental results are presented in this paper.

An optical method for measuring surface deformation of automotive panels is presented. The technique, which is based a 3-D computer vision technique previously reported by the authors, is full-field, noncontact, simple, fast and can be automated. Theory of the technique together with experimental results are presented in the paper.