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Design and performance testing of a dielectric elastomer strain sensor

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Abstract

Dielectric elastomer sensors show great potential for wearable devices and soft robots. This paper proposes a method to design, fabricate and parameter optimize of a rectangular sheet dielectric elastomer strain sensor (RS-DESS). The RS-DESS is composed of three VHB 4905 membranes (a commercial product from 3 M company). The central membrane is coated by carbon grease on both sides, serving as a capacitor for sensing. Other two membranes serve as sealing layers to protect the capacitor from damage and pollution. The experimental results show that the capacitance of the RS-DESS increases approximately linearly with the growth of strain at first, then grows slowly and reduces rapidly after reaching a peak. The approximate linear portion of the capacitance response is intercepted as the measuring range of the RS-DESS. The effects of design parameters on the performance of the RS-DESS is tested. It is found that the sensitivity of the RS-DESS will enhance by reducing the length–width ratio and increasing the pre-strain factor. However, it should be noted that the measuring range will reduce as the pre-strain factors increases. Based on comprehensive consideration of sensitivity and measuring range, the optimal ranges of design parameters are selected.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 51435010, and in part by the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality under Grant 16JC1401000.

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Correspondence to Li-Min Zhu.

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Tao, YD., Gu, GY. & Zhu, LM. Design and performance testing of a dielectric elastomer strain sensor. Int J Intell Robot Appl 1, 451–458 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41315-017-0026-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41315-017-0026-6

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