A Self-Powered Strain Sensor Applied to Real-Time Monitoring for Movable Structures

This study uses near-field electrospinning (NFES) technology to make a novel self-powered strain sensor and applies it to the real-time monitoring of a bending structure, so that the measurement equipment can be reduced in volume. A self-powered strain sensor consists of polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) fibers, a PDMS fixed substrate, and an aluminum electrode. PVDF fibers are spun with DMSO and acetone using NFES technology, with a diameter of about 8 μm, Young’s modulus of 1.1 GPa, and piezoelectric effect of up to 230 mV. The fixed substrate is a film made of PDMS by thermal curing, then adhered to the PDMS film surface of the sheet Al metal as an Al electrode, and then combined with PVDF fiber film, to become a self-powered strain sensor. As a result, the XRD β value of the self-powered strain sensor reaches 2112 and the sensitivity is increased by 20% over a traditional strain sensor. The cumulative angle algorithm can be applied to measure the angular change of the object over a unit of time or the cumulative displacement of the object over the entire period of motion. The experimental results demonstrate that the self-powered strain sensor combined with the angle accumulation algorithm may be applied to monitor the bending structure, thereby achieving continuous measurements of bending structure changes, and improving on traditional piezoelectric sensors, which can only be sensed once. In the future, self-powered strain sensors will have the ability to continuously measure in real-time, enabling the use of piezoelectric sensors for long-term monitoring of structural techniques.