Measurement Method for Fluid Pressure Fluctuation in Fluid-Conveying Pipe Using PVDF Piezoelectric Film Sensor

Abstract

As a representative fluid-transporting system, fluid-conveying pipes play an essential role in many fields. For a fluid-conveying pipe system in operation, fluid pulsation in pipes contains much information about fluid flow parameters (flow velocity, fluid pressure, etc.). Therefore, the measurement of fluid pulsation is important for understanding the internal fluid flow. To use polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) piezoelectric film sensors to indirectly measure the pressure fluctuation of the internal fluid, we simulated a fluid-conveying pipe with PVDF piezoelectric film sensors attached to the outer pipe wall. The simulation results showed that the variation of voltage signal of PVDF, circumferential stress and strain of the pipe wall, and the pressure fluctuation of internal fluid were highly positively correlated, which proved that the PVDF piezoelectric film sensor can be applied to indirectly measure the pressure fluctuation of internal fluid. We also studied the influences of flow velocity pulsation and mechanical vibration caused by the pipeline pump during operation. It is found that the flow velocity pulsation had little influence on the measurements of the variation of circumferential stress and strain of the pipe wall and the internal fluid pressure fluctuation. When both ends of the pipe were fixed by hoops, mechanical vibration had little influence on the measurement of the variation of circumferential stress and strain of the pipe wall as well as the fluid pressure fluctuation. Finally, simulation results were verified by experiments.

Coral-like BaTiO3-Filled Polymeric Composites as Piezoelectric Nanogenerators for Movement Sensing

“…The development of portable and wearable electronic devices is a newly emerging field of science and technology that has been extensively researched in recent years and has been widely used in devices required for human life, such as electronic communication devices and health monitoring sensors [1,2]. Despite the convenience offered by these technologies, the conventional power supply used in the above-mentioned devices is still based on energy conversion devices (lithium batteries, lead-acid batteries, etc.)…”