In this paper, a SOI (silicon-on-insulator)-based piezoresistive fluid flow sensor is presented; the presented flow sensor mainly consists of a nylon sensing head, stainless steel cantilever beam, SOI sensor chip, printed circuit board, half-cylinder gasket, and stainless steel shell. The working principle of the sensor and some detailed contrastive analysis about the sensor structure were introduced since the nylon sensing head and stainless steel cantilever beam have distinct influence on the sensor performance; the structure of nylon sensing head and stainless steel cantilever beam is also discussed. The SOI sensor chip was fabricated using micro-electromechanical systems technologies, such as reactive ion etching and low pressure chemical vapor deposition. The designed fluid sensor was packaged and tested; a calibration installation system was purposely designed for the sensor experiment. The testing results indicated that the output voltage of the sensor is proportional to the square of the fluid flow velocity, which is coincident with the theoretical derivation. The tested sensitivity of the sensor is 3.91 × 10 V ms/kg.

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Efficiently estimating the aging status of rubber damping is indispensable in the transport system. Herein, we developed a facile approach to fabricate flexible capacitance sensors that can bear high loads, large deformations, and long cycle life. The sensor has a sandwich structure, including electrode layer, the dielectric layer, and encapsulation layer. In this approach, the spatial confining forced network assembly method was used to fabricate the electrode layer of the sensor and a novel injection mold process was used to form the encapsulation layer of the sensor. This flexible capacitive sensor can detect the cyclic loading of damping rubber springs as high as 0-60 kN under load frequency of 3 Hz with a sensitivity of 30 PF/KN, bear up to maximum 58% deformation and cycling stability over 50,000 cycle. Furthermore, a modified aging status prediction model for damping rubber springs based on the signal of sensor is proposed. The real-time working state and aging state of the rubber spring can be monitored through the measurement signal of the sensor.

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