Development of a strain sensor for rolling contact loads. -A strain sensor for high spatial resolution and low response time for rolling contact loads was developed and applied to an axial cylindrical roller bearing. The sensor consists of 100 nm thick titanium and is embedded in an aluminum oxide layer of 500 nm thickness that acts as a wear resistant and insulating layer. For an easy transfer of the process to radial surfaces only one photolithographic step is used.The sensor was characterized and compared to an A.S.T. KAF-S load cell. Due to the small form factor the spatial resolution is in the range of 500 µm. The double basic dynamic load rating per rolling element was tested and good linearity was achieved.Possible application areas are structural health monitoring of large machines such as wind turbines or the verification of simulation results of roller bearings.

In this paper a prototype of an intelligent micropump is presented. The electrical parameters of the micropump are regulated by measuring the actual flow rate with an integrated thermal flow sensor. The micropump moves liquids with a regulated flow rate with a range of 100 μl/min to several ml/min. The accuracy is better than 10 %. The micropump and flow sensor are controlled via integrated electronics to form a fully integrated system. The flow sensor is placed directly into the path of the fluid of the micropump, to minimize the complexity of the system and maximize its robustness. Further the system was manufactured using low cost methods. The gained flexibility of the system opens the door to a wide range of applications such as the dosage of fluids e.g. in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industry.

This paper presents the latest investigations of thin film sensor developments based on amorphous hydrogenated carbon films. The piezo resistive layer is deposited in a plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition process in a thickness of 4-6 m. The advantage of this film is a excellent tribological behaviour with a hardness of 20-40 GPa and a coefficient of friction of 0,2 as it is well known from the diamond like carbon layers combined with a piezo resistive characteristic. This layer can detect loads without the need of elongation. A special sensor system in the shape of a washer can be easily integrated in screw joints to detect the normal load distribution