The Manufacture and Mechanical Analysis of the PVDF Flexible Sensors

Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) is a widely used sensing material with piezoelectricity property. Applying microelectronic technology to this material could result in multifunctional sensing unit. Based on the previous researches, a manufacturing process and flexible structure are proposed to manufacture the PVDF film and the PVDF flexible sensor using stretchable electronic technology. The sensor is designed to be paved on the surface of airfoil to monitor the structural behaviors. Two systems are compared, one with a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) layer and the other without. The finite element results show that the Au electrodes films are harder to be destructed for the system with PDMS, because the PVDF flexible sensor can realize the strain-isolation, therefore the resistance to destruction of the sensors could be improved. However, the deformation of duralumin is increased, so the substrate that the flexible sensor paves on will undertake a majority portion of stresses and strains, and a substrate with reasonable stiffness will contribute to the structure integrity.