Almost a year!

 Hello, my name is Marios Kaminiotis. I am from Greece and I am 26 years old. I am a Doctoral Candidate of the European Project USES2. Regarding my academic background I studied Physics in University of Patras Greece and when I gratuated, I immediately enrolled in a Master's Program in Chemical Engineeiring Department of the same University about Science and Technology of Polymers and Composite Materials. There, I had the opportunity to study and develop a fibrous materials synthesis technique called electrospinning. I used the obtained polymeric materials in various applications such as photocatalysis, counterfeit and triboelectric nanogenerators. Triboelectric nanogenerators are energy harvesting devices that utilize the coupling of contact electrification and electrostatic induction to convert mechanical energy to electricity. In USES2 project, we want to embed sensors in enormous structures like wind turbines, bridges, railways and aircrafts, in order to detect defects and anomalies in the structure and underline the need for maintenance or immediate repairs in unsafe components. It is common sense that something that should provide power to the sensor is needed. There are three possible ways to power up sensors. Either connect them to wires that should provide the necessary powerm connect it to a battery and by energy harvesting. To power up these sensors with the traditional way using wires is not suitable due to extensive cabling and high installation cost. A sufficient way to power up a sensor is by using batteries, but they require regular maintanance due to their limited lifespan. A revoluzionizing way to power up sensor is to harvest energy from the environment of the sensor and for example by harvesting the energy provided by vibrations. Vibrations can be harvested by different work mechanisms like piezoelectricity, triboelectricity, electromagnetic effect, tribovoltaic effect etc. A vibration energy harvester is a suitable solution to either power up a battery supply and prolong its lifespan, reducing the time of maintanance and costs or to completely power up the sensor, creating an autonomous self-powered sensor. My contribution to this project is to create an energy harvester that ideally would power up a sensor for structural health monitoring applications.