Development of a Graphene-Based Wireless Displacement Transducer

Abstract

Graphene-based sensors have drawn significant attention in the field of monitoring due to their excellent mechanical and electrical properties. In this study, an innovative graphene wireless displacement transducer was developed. This displacement transducer consists of two components: a processing unit characterized by the features of low cost, low latency, and low power consumption, and a sensing unit composed of a graphene-based displacement sensor with the advantages of simplification, a large measurement range, and high durability. The structural design of the graphene-based displacement sensor was realized using 3D printing technology. A series of calibration experiments were carried out to evaluate the measurement performance of the displacement transducer. Measurement results of calibration experiments indicate that the measurement sensitivity and static error were 29.6 kΩ/mm and 7.62%, respectively. The maximum measurement range was 0-90 mm. The obtained maximum resistance difference of the graphene sensor is less than 4.5% under the cyclic test, indicating the sensor has excellent stability. The displacement transducer is expected to apply for structural health monitoring of infrastructures such as crack monitoring, relative movement measurement, etc.