Porous Elastomer Based Wide Range Flexible Pressure Sensor for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Abstract

This work presents the design and implementation of a porous polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based wide-range flexible pressure sensor for autonomous underwater vehicles. The capacitive sensor, with porous PDMS as dielectric, is encapsulated in bulk PDMS polymer. The fabricated sensor was evaluated over a wide pressure range (0-230 kPa), which is similar to pressures experienced up to approx. 24m below the sea level. The sensors showed linear response when tested in air and near-linear response (98%) when submerged in water. The sensor showed much higher sensitivity (0.375 kPa -1 ) in water than in the air environment. However, the sensor exhibited the performance and sensitivity similar to the air condition (0.005 kPa -1 ) when the readout electronics (encapsulated inside a watertight enclosure) was also submerged inside the water along with the sensor. The fabricated sensor also exhibited fast response and recovery time (190 ms), as well as excellent repeatability and stability (no drift) over tested range of 50 loading and unloading cycles. These results demonstrate the suitability of presented sensors for potential use in applications requiring a wide range of pressure, particularly the underwater robotics where real-time pressure monitoring is critical for autonomous operation.

Elastomeric Foam-Based Soft Capacitive Pressure Sensors Using Direct Ink Writing

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“…Additive Screen Printing /drop casting [38] Porous PDMS 0.0052 (0-20 kPa) 0.008 (50-200 kPa) 0.0018 (300-900 kPa) Drop-casting [32] Porous PDMS 0.0051 (0-230 kPa) Drop-casting [39] CNF/Porous PDMS 0.60 (0-1kPa)…”

Recent application progress and key challenges of biomass-derived carbons in resistive strain/pressure sensor

“…The main performance parameters of resistive strain/pressure sensors include sensitivity [59], sensing range [60], response time and fatigue resistance [61,62], which are used to effectively evaluate the real-time performance and reliability of the device detection, having crucial implications for the real-life applications of sensors. Sensitivity is the most important criteria for evaluating the performance of sensors [63].…”

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“…For resistive pressure sensors, the situation is similar. Fortunately, some scientists have noticed this problem and reported some research results of a few wide-range flexible pressure sensors. − For instance, a resistive pressure sensor based on carbon nanotube network-coated porous elastomer sponges has been reported by Kim et al., which shows an ultrawide pressure sensing range from 10 Pa to 1.2 MPa . A resistive pressure sensor based on hierarchical microstructures, reported by Li et al, shows a broad linearity range over 200 kPa .…”