Performance Evaluation of Flexible Capacitive Sensors on Non-Uniform Surfaces

The use of strain gauges is foundational to structural health monitoring, allowing infrastructure to continuously observe strain, infer stress, and potentially detect fatigue/fracture cracks. However, traditional strain gauges have drawbacks. In addition to being costly, a single-element strain gauge will only detect strain in a single direction and must be mounted on smooth surfaces to ensure good adhesion. Soft Elastomeric Capacitors (SECs) have been proposed as a low-cost alternative to traditional strain gauges while allowing for a broader range of applications. They are flexible and can be modeled with different dimensions based on the monitored structure. Each SEC consists of three layers; the two outer layers act as electrodes and are made of a styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene polymer in a matrix with carbon black. The inner (dielectric) layer comprises titanium oxide in a matrix with SEBS. The use of the SECs is not limited by the geometry of the surface being monitored, and it can, therefore, be adhered to a variety of surfaces as its flexibility allows it to conform to the irregularity and complexity of the monitored structure. The change experienced by a structure will correlate directly to the change in capacitance observed across the sensor, which can be used to predict the monitored structure’s state. While SECs have been studied for applications on various materials, experiments have been limited to adhering the sensor to smooth surfaces. However, concrete structures have various surface finishes that are not uniform, often deriving from an architect’s aesthetic desire. This work tests a corrugated SEC through compression tests on concrete samples with different surface finishing to investigate the effect of surface finishing on the SEC-measured strain. Each concrete sample is subjected to loading by a dynamic testing system, and the data collected from the SEC are compared to off-the-shelf resistive strain gauges. The results show that the performance of the cSEC on the different surfaces is not hindered by different concrete finishes, where a high signal-to-noise ratio of 21 dB and low mean absolute error of 22 µϵ is seen on the concrete specimen with a rough concrete surface. The strain metrics and surface effect on SEC performance are discussed.