Design and Fabrication of a PVDF-based Accelerometer

Nowadays, piezopolymers have broad uses such as vibration sensors, accelerometer, motion detection, pressure and force sensors, touch panels, etc. The main feature of these materials are their ability to produce voltage when subjected to a strain field and vice versa. One of the best known piezopolymers is PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride). PVDFs are used mostly as sensors due to their great feature of sensing; but they are rarely used as actuators. In this paper, this material is used as a sensor and an accelerometer is made by connecting it to an aluminum cantilever beam shape structure and all the steps required to build this accelerometer was explained. First the relation of voltage versus strain of a piezo material is presented and then the relation between acceleration of base and the beam strain modeled using ABAQUS. In other hand we tried to design the structure of sensor for optimizing the sensitivity coefficient and working frequency domain. Finally the steps of producing and testing are briefly presented and the acquired result from accelerometer is analysed and compared.