Inner car smart flooring for monitoring chassis deformation

This paper presents a novel inner car smart flooring concept able to monitor chassis deformation during the car lifecycle or when a car accident occurs. The proposed smart structure uses Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG) sensors embedded into standard laminated polymeric sheets used in the automobile. The fabrication was made using an industrial process and the characterization of the resulting polymeric foil able to sense and gather sensitive data was performed. It was verified that the fabricated foil is capable of transferring the full deformation to the optical sensor. The FBG sensor, after incorporation in the polymeric foil, is fully functional with a behavior of 0.6 pm/¿¿ (picometer per microstrain), and measuring displacements up to 1.2 mm. The integration process of FBG based-sensors in Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) foils is described in detail, enabling the industrial mass production of large sensing foils fully customizable for automotive applications.