Research on force-sensing element's spatial arrangement of piezoelectric six-component force/torque sensor

This paper proposes a novel piezoelectric six-component force/torque sensor with four-point supporting structure, and makes research on force-sensing element's spatial arrangement of the novel sensor. Two kinds of different spatial arrangements are advanced, lozenge and square arrangement. The mathematical models are built and calculated. The influence on using performance of the two kinds of different spatial arrangements of the sensor is analyzed by FEM (ANSYS software). In order to investigate the validity of the proposed method, a prototype of piezoelectric six-component force/moment sensor is developed with two kinds of different spatial arrangements, and characteristic tests of the piezoelectric six-component force/moment sensor are performed. The test shows that both of the different spatial arrangement sensors could be used to measure six-component force/torque, but the square arrangement piezoelectric six-component force/moment sensor is more suitable for measurement of six-component force/torque on axis. The interference errors of square arrangement sensor are less than 5%, which are lower than those of the lozenge arrangement sensor. The natural frequencies in six directions are analyzed and discussed. Crown Copyright (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.