Estimating deformation of a thin flexible plate using a minimum number of angular measurement

Previous methods to measure the deformation of a soft material attach many sensors to the material, which requires many signal wires and analog-to-digital converters to increase the measurement resolution. These approaches increase both the size of the mechanical apparatus in which the soft material must be incorporated and the concomitant risk of breakage. To avoid these difficulties, we propose herein to measure soft-material deformation based on the Euler elastic theory, which requires a minimum number of angular measurement. The target material studied is a thin flexible plate, and we use a minimum number of angular measurement to estimate and analyze the plate deformation. The results of the analysis show that when three constraints are applied, three angular data are required to estimate plate deformation. Furthermore, these results are experimentally confirmed.