Comparative Performance Study of Strain Gauge Sensors for Ion Thrust Measurement

Abstract

A strain gauge based thrust measurement system has been developed, by fabricating a thrust balance with four columns. In order to compare the performance of the different types of strain gauges for ion thrust measurement, foil type strain gauges were bonded to the first column and semiconductor strain gauges were bonded to the second column. Whereas, thin film strain gauges of NiCr and Pt-W materials were deposited on to the third and fourth columns respectively. The strain gauges of a particular type in each column, connected in Wheatstone bridge configuration, were calibrated to measure the thrust produced using Lami's principle and the performance was studied. Strain gauge bridge sensitivities varied from about 6 µV/mN to 115 µV/mN and the non-linearity varied from about 0.98 % to 2.84 % for bridges formed by the different types of strain gauges. Details on the calibration and simultaneous comparative performance study of the system developed have been presented

Displacement sensing with quasi-zero stiffness structure and flexoelectricity

“…The arrangement of multiple electrodes in this work will increase the output of polarized charge, enhancing the robustness and sensitivity of the proposed structure. Importantly, flexoelectricity is unrestricted from Curie temperatures, allowing the proposed structure to be used as a passive, absolute, and miniature displacement sensor under complex environments, such as high temperatures, which bring difficulties for different types of existing sensors [30][31][32].…”

“…These characteristics allow flexoelectricity to have immense flexibility and prospects in material and device design, such as force and displacement sensors used under high-temperature conditions [29]. The combination of QZS structure and flexoelectricity can potentially serve as a passive and absolute position sensor in complex environments, which is challenging to accomplish with laser displacement meters [30], strain gauges [31], and linear variable displacement transducers [32]. Additionally, miniature sensors based on flexoelectricity at the micrometer or even smaller scales are promising with the considerable advancement of micromanufacturing in recent decades [33,34].…”

Highly sensitive, scalable reduced graphene oxide with palladium nano-composite as strain sensor

“…Most of the traditional strain gauges are fixed directional, making it difficult to embed them into structural materials [2,3]. Apart from that, metal type strain gauges suffer from low strain resolution, their strain sensitivity (gauge factor (GF)) ranging from 1.4 to 2.1 [4,5]. Semiconductor type strain gauges have high sensitivity, but they are fragile compared to foil gauges, highly sensitive to temperature changes and exhibit nonlinear response at larger strains (>1%) [6][7][8][9][10].…”