Sensing protection issues

The U.S. Army has tapped UCI professor Maria Feng to develop the military’s next generation of “smart armor” that can tell soldiers where and how their protective gear is damaged on the battlefield, college officials announced Wednesday.

Feng received a five-year, $5.5-million grant to establish the Center for Advanced Monitoring and Damage Inspection, a research facility on the UCI campus.

There she will develop sensors built into soldiers’ armor that monitor its integrity and report the data to them on the field.

“We have a fiber optic sensor — it’s like a single hair. It’s very small, and we’ll somehow embed the fiber into the material,” Feng said. “When a crack occurs [in the armor], it will stretch the fiber. The [sensor’s] signal will change. By detecting the change in the signal we can detect the cracks.”

The Army is capitalizing on Feng’s recent advances in sensory technology. Feng, a civil engineering and structural health monitoring expert, recently helped Caltrans wire Long Beach’s Vincent Thomas Bridge and three bridges in Orange County. A part of the Costa Mesa’s northbound Fairview Road onramp onto the 405 Freeway is among those wired for real-time structural data along with a stretch of the 5 Freeway near Disneyland.

Feng’s sensory technology was discussed after the bridge collapse in Minneapolis in August that killed 13 people. This will be her first venture into expanding the technology into wearable materials.

“I think the fundamentals are the same. It’s just a different application to different materials. It has its own challenges,” she said.

Feng’s “smart armor” research will focus on lightweight body armor and helmets worn by individuals, but the technology may prove useful for tanks, helicopters and planes. She’ll give a talk on the future of armor to military officials later this year.

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at [email protected].