Optimal design of piezoelectric cantilever velocity sensor based on PVDF

Abstract

The response charge of piezoelectric speed sensors using a conventional rectangular cantilever is low, which also causes a low sensitivity in speed measurement. To improve the sensor sensitivity, a piezoelectric speed sensor based on a streamlined piezoelectric cantilever is employed in this paper. Furthermore, a theoretical optimization model of the sensor based on Bernstein polynomial equation is established, and a simulation optimization flow work is also proposed. With method of moving asymptotes (MMA) algorithm, more charge output can be obtained than before. The simulation results show that the optimized sensor can output a voltage of 416 mV and obtain a sensitivity of 52 mV/m⋅s−1 when the input speed is 8 m/s. As compared with the values of 300 mV and 37.5 mV/m⋅s−1 in the un-optimized case, the improvement in the sensor sensitivity is up to 38%, which confirms the effectiveness of the proposed method.