In recent years, intensive researches have been stimulated to explore the promising prospect for carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in the fabrication of novel polymer sensor composites. In this study, the fabrication and properties of a flexible and stretchable composite elastomer fabricated from direct-spun carbon nanotube fiber (yarns) were presented, and the novel CNT fiber/polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastic conductive composite shows the reversible two-stage conductivity owing to its unique structure of CNTs fabricated by the floating catalyst chemical vapor deposition (FCCVD). As the strain increased from 0% to 10% (Stage I), stretching the oriented CNT fiber/PDMS elastic conductive composite induces a constant decrease in the conductive pathways and contact areas between CNTs depending on the stretching distance. However, this composite elastomer will retain almost stable electrical resistance while being stretched by over 10% (Stage II). Furthermore, the composite shows very little variation in resistance under 187 stretching–releasing cycles up to a pre-strain level of 6%, indicating the outstanding stability and repeatability in performance as stretchable conductors. The microstructure, reversible two-stage conductive properties and mechanism were also discussed.
Hull monitoring system with Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors increasingly receives people’s attentions. However, for the ship hull monitoring, the deformation of hull girder changes a lot as is subjected to a huge temperature variation. Therefore, the compensation method with only FBG temperature self-correction is not suitable for the hull monitoring sensors because no material thermal expansion effects are reasonably included. In this paper, the new compensation method of hull monitoring FBG sensor based on the sensor theory with both FBG temperature self-correction and steel thermal expansion effects correction is studied. The coupled compensation method suitable for hull monitoring sensor is obtained by theoretical derivation. As the comparison, the coupled compensation experiment was carried out. The results show that the relative error under the temperature compensation method is large in the case of drastic strain and temperature changes, and the correction results of the tested method will be closer to the true level.
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