Design and Development of a Novel MEMS Force Sensor for Plantar Pressure Measurement

Author

Xuefeng, Zhang ; Yulong, Zhao ; Yi, Xu

Author_Institution

State Key Lab. for Manuf. Syst. Eng., Xi´´an Jiaotong Univ., Xi´´an, China

fYear

2010

fDate

18-25 July 2010

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

5

Abstract

Planter force plays an important role in the gait analysis and other biomedical applications. The paper presents a study on the designing of a new MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical system) force sensor for plantar force measurement. This force sensor consists of a metal elastic element and a MEMS strain gauge realized through SOI (silicon on insulator) technology. The process of design and fabrication of the strain gauge and metal elastic element is given. A commercial software tool ANSYSTM is introduced to help validate the usability of the elastic element structure and determine the proper position of the strain gauge in the bottom surface of the metal elastic element. The calibration result confirms the feasibility and the effectiveness of the sensor.

Keywords

bioMEMS; biomedical measurement; calibration; force measurement; force sensors; gait analysis; microsensors; pressure measurement; silicon-on-insulator; strain gauges; MEMS force sensor; MEMS strain gauge; biomedical applications; calibration; commercial software tool ANSYSTM; elastic element structure; gait analysis; metal elastic element; microelectro-mechanical system; plantar force measurement; plantar pressure measurement; silicon-on-insulator; Fabrication; Finite element methods; Force; Force sensors; Metals; Micromechanical devices; Strain; MEMS; force measurement; planter pressure; sensor;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Advances in Circuits, Electronics and Micro-Electronics (CENICS), 2010 Third International Conference on

Conference_Location

Venice

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-7535-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CENICS.2010.8

Filename

5558174