Affiliation:
1. Naval Architecture Department, University of West Attica, 12243 Athens, Greece
2. microSENSES Laboratory, Electrical & Electronic Engineering Department, University of West Attica, 12243 Athens, Greece
Abstract
This work concerns the design, fabrication, and testing of a novel air-flow sensor employing exclusively additive manufacturing that can be fabricated on-site, aboard a ship, or in a similarly remote area, without relying on external manufacturing facilities. The developed device’s principle of operation is based on vortex shedding; its novelty focuses on employing solely additive manufacturing technology, for the manufacturing—in a single process step—of all the sensor’s main elements. In more detail, the required flow-shaping housing, the appropriate piezoresistive sensing element, and the electrical interconnection pads are all constructed in a single process step, through standard Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D technology. Direct communication to the necessary readout circuitry can be easily achieved through standard soldering utilizing the integrated contact pads of the sensor. The prototype was preliminary characterized, validating its proper functionality. Key features of the proposed device are low cost, fast on-site manufacturing of the entire measuring device, robustness, and simplicity, suggesting numerous potential applications in the shipbuilding industry and other industrial sectors.
Subject
Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Biochemistry,Instrumentation,Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics,Analytical Chemistry
Reference38 articles.
1. 3D Printing: Print the Future of Ophthalmology;Huang;Investig. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci.,2014
2. A review on 3D printed bioimplants;Ho;Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf.,2015
3. Mosadegh, B., Xiong, G., Dunham, S., and Min, J.K. (2022, October 05). Current Progress in 3D Printing for Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering. Available online: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-6041/10/3/034002/meta.
4. Three-dimensional printing of nanomaterial scaffolds for complex tissue regeneration;Holmes;Tissue Eng. Part B Rev.,2015
5. The technical trend of the exoskeleton robot system for human power assistance;Lee;Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf.,2012