Abstract
Precise measurements of low pressure are highly necessary for many applications. This study developed novel structured fibre sensors embedded in silicone, forming smart skin with high sensitivity, high durability, and good immunity to crosstalk for precise measurement of pressure below 10 kPa. The transduction principle is that an applied pressure leads to bending and stretching of silicone and optical fibre over a purposely made groove and induces the axial strain in the gratings. The fabricated sensor showed high pressure sensitivity up to 26.8 pm/kPa and experienced over 1,000,000 cycles compression without obvious variation. A theoretical model of the sensor was presented and verified to have excellent agreement with experimental results. The prototype of smart leg mannequin and wrist pulse measurements indicated that such optical sensors can precisely measure low-pressure and can easily be integrated for smart skins for mapping low pressure on three-dimensional surfaces.
Highlights
Precise measurements of low pressure are highly necessary for many applications involving human interaction with industrial machines, vehicles in traffic accidents, robotic exoskeletons, contact sports, daily activities and healthcare applications [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Fibre Bragg grating-based sensors have demonstrated their potential in human health monitoring, such as in ballistocardiographic measurements [40], blood-pressure evaluation [22], and blood glucose evaluation [41]
It means that the proposed optical sensor highly sensitive to the vibration induced by the pulse waves, and when the compression stocking was placed on the leg mannequin, the exerted pressure will be provides an accurate measurement of the pulse waves, which is benefit of various applications, evaluated continually through the optical integrator, and the evaluated result will be listed on a simple including diagnosis of heart rates, the pulse pressure [22], the blood glucose [41] and others [42]
Summary
Precise measurements of low pressure are highly necessary for many applications involving human interaction with industrial machines, vehicles in traffic accidents, robotic exoskeletons, contact sports, daily activities and healthcare applications [1,2,3,4,5,6]. That is, pressure of about 4.33 kPa and above that induces capillary closure, will make people feel uncomfortable, have numbness of the affected body part, or even suffer from series health issues [9,10,11], and on the contrary, insufficient pressure will limit the efficacy of treatments These differences highlight the significance of the precise measurement of pressure. Relative to electrical sensors [14,15,16], optical fibre sensors have specific advantages of high sensitivity, robustness, good immunity to electromagnetic interference, the intrinsic safety without electricity at the measuring point, and ease of integration, that is, one optical fibre can have multiplexed strain/temperature sensing units by using the technologies of wavelength-division-multiplexing, fibre Bragg gratings and others Such optical sensors have been demonstrated to monitor low pressure in the healthcare fields, such as measurements of planter
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