Abstract
The need to accurately measure the mechanical properties of freestanding thin films such as carbon nanotube reinforced nanocomposite thin films and various buckypaper is increasingly urgent. This paper presents the design and control of a novel compliant tensile testing module based on buckled fixed-guided beams aimed at accurately measuring the mechanical properties of freestanding thin films. The piezoelectric stack actuator that can provide high resolution for the output displacement is chosen to actuate the tensile testing module. The advantages of the module are its compactness, no friction, no wear, low cost and good repeatability. The performance is further evaluated by the established analytical model using the elliptic integral approach and the nonlinear finite-element analysis (FEA). A metal prototype of the tensile testing design has been fabricated and the performance of the fabricated prototype is investigated through open-loop displacement response experiments. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed ideas for the mechanism. The design holds great potential applications in measuring mechanical properties of freestanding thin-film materials such as carbon nanotube reinforced nanocomposite thin films and various buckypaper as well as other freestanding thin-film materials.
Highlights
With the development of ultrahigh precision manipulation engineering, more attentions have been focused on ultrahigh precision small-scale measurement systems [1,2,3]
In summary, this paper presents the design, modeling, finite-element analysis (FEA) simulation, fabrication and experimental study of a novel compliant tensile testing module based on buckled fixedguided beams
The design of the tensile testing module is aimed at measuring the mechanical properties of freestanding thin films such as carbon nanotube reinforced nanocomposite thin films and various buckypaper, as well as polymeric thin films
Summary
With the development of ultrahigh precision manipulation engineering, more attentions have been focused on ultrahigh precision small-scale measurement systems [1,2,3]. Ruud et al from Harvard University [4] developed a micro tensile test platform which uses compliant mechanism driven by piezoelectric actuators to measure the mechanical response of self-supporting thin film materials. The limitation of this system is that the stroke of small piezoelectric actuators is too small. When the actuator generates output force to drive the fixed grip of the fixture, the moving grip of the fixture generates displacement along the x-axis under the guidance of the compliant mechanism. The non-contact displacement sensor and the stress sensor measure the real-time signals and transmit the signals to the signal processing module
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