Abstract: “Resonance Force Sensor” has broad—and in some cases revolutionary—applications throughout aerospace, maritime, transportation, and industrial force sensing as a low cost, embedded, robust, self-calibrating strain-pressure sensor. Applications include but are not limited to structural load measurement, structural health monitoring, fluid and gas line pressure measurement, batch process manufacturing, and other force-sensing applications. When a complex structure, e.g. an aircraft or ground vehicle structure, is so instrumented, the present invention serves as the primary sensory component for a highly accurate, automatic, on-board vehicular weight and balance system. This sensor system can also be used in non-vehicular structures to measure axial, radial or flexural loading, and hence gravitational mass loading, of structural elements and structural systems.

Abstract: Systems and methods for measuring a load in a structural element include placing at least one actuator and sensor on the structural element. The actuator is capable of exciting a wave of a predetermined frequency in the structural element and the sensor is capable of sensing the wave excited in the structural element. A computer control unit is applied to operate the actuator so as to excite a wave in the structural member in at least a first frequency, and to operate the sensor so as to measure at least one of a change in a resonance frequency in the structural element as a result of a change in loading on the structural member and a change in phase angle in the wave sensed by the sensor as a result of a change in loading on the structural member.