Fabrication and testing of re-entrant auxetic samples and sensor: Numerically and experimentally

Abstract

Auxetic structures (negative Poisson’s ratio) are a group of materials that expand (contract) under tensile (compression) longitudinal loading. In this work, the effect of re-entrant auxetic structure geometry on Poisson’s ratio was investigated under large tensile loading experimentally and numerically and showed that the location and stiffness of rotation joints are two new important parameters affecting the value of Poisson’s ratio. Poisson's ratio increases as the rotation joints tighten and move away from the center of the structure. Therefore, by changing the location and stiffness of the rotation joints, it will be easy to obtain re-entrant auxetic structures with different Poisson's ratios, which makes it possible to build piezoresistant auxetic sensors with different sensitivities. A highly sensitive, stretchable piezoresistant auxetic sensor made of silicon rubber and chopped carbon fibers is proposed for low strain values. The main feature of this sensor is its high sensitivity for strains less than 6%, which previous works have been unable to detect this range of strains. Shifting strain is the value of strain in which the Poisson's ratio of the structure changes from negative to positive. The provided auxetic sensor performs exceptionally well until the shifting strain and then performs as conventional sensors. This improvement in sensing performance is about 150% (in terms of gauge factor).