Sensitivity enhancement of MEMS fluid flow rate and flow direction sensor

Abstract

MEMS based flow rate sensor and flow direction sensor is a crucial to the determination of exact fluid flow path. Conventional rectangular cantilever beam detects based on the surface strain of the beam with respect to the mass flow. Different structured beam will greatly affect the sensitivity. In this paper different geometries of cantilever beam such as rectangular, inverted trapezoidal, triangular are designed and simulated using the finite element software INTELLISUITE 8.7. The simulation results show that the inverted trapezoidal geometries having the more deflection at same stress of the conventional beam and thus increase the sensitivity by approx. 1.45 times.