3D-Printed Stretchable Strain Sensor With Application to Wind Sensing

Abstract

Stretchable strain sensors with large strain range, high sensitivity, and excellent reliability are of great interest for applications in soft robotics, wearable devices, and structure-monitoring systems. Unlike conventional template lithography-based approaches, 3D-printing can be used to fabricate complex devices in a simple and cost-effective manner. In this paper, we report 3D-printed stretchable strain sensors that embeds a flexible conductive composite material in a hyper-plastic substrate. Three commercially available conductive filaments are explored, among which the conductive thermoplastic polyurethane (ETPU) shows the highest sensitivity (gauge factor of 5), with a working strain range of 0%–20%. The ETPU strain sensor exhibits an interesting behavior where the conductivity increases with the strain. In addition, an experiment for measuring the wind speed is conducted inside a wind tunnel, where the ETPU sensor shows sensitivity to the wind speed beyond 5.6 m/s.