Nervous materials: A new approach for better control, reliability and safety of structures

The paper introduces a new generation of intelligent and nervous materials that is currently required for key applications at macroscale to enhance public safety and reliability of products. A smart design may not be sufficient using standard materials. It is expected to build human like nervous system in core materials used for frames and structures such as aircrafts, cars and other sensitive applications able to capture the failure or 'pain' of multi parameters and immediately feed back to an intelligent controller for instant decision making. With such materials, real time monitoring for structural health will be finally possible enhancing performance and reliability. This will imply some new design strategies that may be costly at initial stages but worth exploring.