Manufacturing of soft capacitive strain sensor based on dielectric elastomer material for an elastic element of a jaw coupling

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

In this work, we present a procedure for manufacturing a soft capacitive strain sensor in the form of a multi-layer electrical capacitor for further integration into the elastic gear rim of a jaw coupling. The dielectric elastomer sensor (DES) is based on an elastomeric substrate with alternating layers of conductive carbon black based ink as electrode layers and elastomeric film as a dielectric and electrical insulation. A variety of thin multi-layer sensors were produced to evaluate the manufacturing process. Additionally, using an LCR meter and a tensile test machine, the equivalent electrical capacitance (C) at the two sensor contacts and the applied force are measured, respectively. It is shown that C varies depending on the amount of sample strain caused by the applied force. By testing two versions of DES, a maximum change in capacitance of ΔC = 1.55 pF was achieved. The obtained characteristics show that the presented manufacturing process for the DES can be used as a soft strain sensor to measure the strain caused by the force applied to the elastic element between the jaw couplings.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number015403
JournalEngineering Research Express
Volume6
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - 28 Feb 2024
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85186740063
ORCID /0000-0002-8588-9755/work/166764202
ORCID /0000-0002-5317-1431/work/166764318
ORCID /0000-0002-6437-4496/work/166764880

Keywords

Keywords

  • Capacitive sensor, DES, carbon black based electrodes, conductive ink, dielectric elastomers, strain sensor