Cedrat Technologies, innovation in mechatronics

The recent progresses made in the manufacturing of new plasmonic photomobile films are offering innovative solutions for light induced motion actuators and devices. Indeed, such films can be assimilated as transducers thanks to their ability to convert light into displacement with strokes up to several millimeters. By adjusting the incident light parameters (wavelength, exposure time…) the photomobile films actuation can be controlled to answer many applications requesting high displacements and low forces. In these regards, the behaviour of the photomobile films were characterized prior to their integration in more complex devices.

In the context of Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) for aircrafts, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is one main field of research. Detection and localization of damages in a structure request reliability of the equipment and repeatability of the measurements and process. An electronic device called Lamb Wave Detection System (LWDS) have been developed and manufactured to manage piezo-electric patches either in emission or reception mode with a high commutation rate. Besides, integration of the piezo patches is another crucial aspect of reliability. Several methods as modelling and dispersion curves can define the frequency range of Lamb waves to optimize the piezo-electric coupling. This work which takes part of the H2020 ReMAP project about adaptative aircraft maintenance planning, is presented in the article.

Required improvements of piezoelectric elements actuation and measurement system efficiency and robustness are introduced as a critical feature for structural health monitoring (SHM) applications. An electronic module (Lamb wave detection system: LWDS) allowing to use each piezoelectric element in an array either in emission or reception mode is presented. The high commutation rate between these two states, for each transducer separately, is a key enhancement for SHM methods. The robustness of the sensor integration is also studied considering the patches size and bonding method. Coupled dispersion curve are introduced Comparison of FEM simulation and experiments of the piezo-electric coupling are presented. This work takes part of the H2020 REMAP project about adaptive aircraft maintenance planning.

This article deals with the use of Magnetic Resonant Sensors (M.R.S) for the realisation of an identification system. Nowadays, the market of I.D. systems evolves versus magnetic tags as they bring some advantages like remote identification and removal of the need of handling.