Design and Experimental Validation of Novel Force Sensor

The force measurement is essential in many engineering areas and our life. Accordingly, this paper proposes a new force sensor, in which the restoring force of the traditional spring is replaced by an axial magnetic attraction force. The performance of the proposed force sensor is characterized numerically by means of MagNet simulations and is then verified experimentally using a laboratory-built prototype. The experimental results show that a linear relation exists between the axial magnetic attraction force and the displacement of the moving part. It also confirms that the proposed force sensor can successfully measure the applied force via the output of the displacement. Due to such characteristics, the potential applications of the proposed force sensor are in the field of autofocusing voice coil motor actuators for cell phone camera modules.