Additive Processing of Sacrificial Polymers to Enable Pressure Sensing in Structural Composites

Additive manufacturing of polymers and their composites is an area of increasing academic and industrial interest due to the ability to agilely create complex prototype structures. While efforts continue to attempt to directly print more structural composite element, an alternative approach is to use additive printing with traditional composite processing methods to enable structural multifunctional composite concepts. Within this paper we demonstrate the application of fused deposition printing of sacrificial polymer material to enable embedded microvascular channels within structural composites to enable pressure sensing of morphing structures and for installing pressure tappings for studying hypersonic fluid-structure interactions. Overall, this processing methodology enables many type of microvascular composites whose channels can be computer designed, additively printed, integrated with traditional laminate processing, and effectively evacuated to enable a variety of multifunctional concepts.