Oriented Design And Analysis Of The Smart Skin Micro-pressure Sensors

MEMS devices have the advantages of lightweight, small size and low power consumption, which can meet the requirement of aircraft very well. System, integrated MEMS sensors that use for the parameter measurement of smart-skin, became the important issue in the Aero-MEMS field. This paper explored the micro pressure sensor that is used for the measurement of distributed pressure at the surface of smart-skin.Firstly, established the surface pressure model according to the aerodynamic properties, defined the optical measurement system that based on intensity modulation principle, discussed the components of this system and theoretical analyzed its measurement theory in detail.Then, a micro-machined array of optical pressure sensor has been discussed; each sensor element in the array consists of a Fabry-Perot etalon fabricated from single-crystal silicon; sensor's performance has been increased through improved the structure, and can makeup the arrays which be suitable for the smart-skin. Based on this, presented a new micro pressure sensor, which adopted a Si3N4 sensitive membrane; since the membrane is very thin, we can use membrane-deflection theory to describe the deflection of the membrane under a uniformly applied load, and because with no bending stiffness, the sensitivity of the sensor was increased consequently.Finally, numerical calculation of the deflection and stress analysis of the membrane was performed. By utilizing ANSYS simulation, we can testify that the performance of the sensor reached the design requirement.The sensor array that based on the optical measurement has the advantages of high sensitive, small size, low power and immunity to electro-magnetic interference.