Abstract
Although significant progresses have been made in sensor technology, it is still a challenging task to develop ultrasensitive sensors to monitor very weak and low frequency vibration signal for early warning of natural disasters and efficient structural health monitoring of infrastructures. It has been reported from previous experiments that some fishes have acute sensitivities to extremely low frequency linear acceleration due to the otolith organs of the inner ear. In this paper, based on the experimental results and qualitative mechanism of the infrasound sensitivity of some fishes conducted by other researchers, a bioinspired gating spring model with negative stiffness is established to simulate the mechanical-electricity transduction of the hair cell in fish ear. Then, numerical analyses of the mechanical model subject to static and dynamic loading are conducted, respectively. It is shown that the gating model has adaptive amplification capability to weak and low frequency excitation compared with the corresponding linear model. This mechanism can be used for the design of bioinspired ultrasensitive sensors for monitoring weak and low frequency vibration signal.
Highlights
It is essential to develop high sensitive sensors for early warning of natural disasters and efficient health monitoring of infrastructures [1, 2]
Ambient vibration signals of these large scale infrastructures including tall buildings and long span bridges are weak, low-frequency dominated with frequencies less than 1 Hz and sometimes around 0.1 Hz, and flooded in the ambient noise as the spectra of typical ambient noise grow toward the lower frequencies [3]
Amitrano et al [5] indicated that the frequency range of 0.1–1 Hz is the most sensitive to mudslide velocity and that the frequency range of 0.01–10 Hz is associated with landslide deformation
Summary
It is essential to develop high sensitive sensors for early warning of natural disasters and efficient health monitoring of infrastructures [1, 2]. The unaided otolith organs of the inner ear are not sensitive to sound pressure but to linear accelerations, which is the more relevant stimulus parameter at very low frequencies [11]. In this paper, based on observed experimental results from other researchers [10,11,12,13] on the mechanism of the sensitivity of fish’s inner ear to extremely weak low frequency motion, a bioinspired mechanical model with gating spring for simulating the mechanical-electricity transduction of fish’s hair cell is established. Mechanical functions of the proposed mechanical model on the design of new high sensitive bioinspired low frequency sensors for effective monitoring the vibration signals of civil infrastructures and early warning of natural disasters are addressed
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