• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.30-37
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• 2008

Dynamic excitation and response analysis is an acceptable method to determine some of physical properties of agricultural product for quality evaluation. There is a difference in the internal viscoelasticity between sound and defective fruits due to the difference of geometric structures, thereby showing different vibration characteristics. This study was carried out to develop a portable piezoelectric film-based glove sensor system that can separate internally damaged watermelons from sound ones using an acoustic impulse response technique. Two piezoelectric sensors based on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) films to measure an impact force and vibration response were separately mounted on each glove. Various signal parameters including number of peaks, energy ratio, standard deviation of peak to peak distance, zero-crossing rate, and integral value of peaks were examined to develop a regression-estimated model. When using SMLR (Stepwise Multiple Linear Regression) analysis in SAS, three parameters, i.e., zeros value, number of peaks, and standard deviation of peaks were selected as usable factors with a coefficient of determination ($r^2$) of 0.92 and a standard error of calibration (SEC) of 0.15. In the validation tests using twenty watermelon samples (sound 9, defective 11), the developed model provided good capability showing a classification accuracy of 95%.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.21-29
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• 1996

A piezoresistive silicon acceleration sensor with 8 beams, utilized by an unique silicon micromachining technique using porous silicon etching method which was fabricated on the selectively diffused (111)-oriented $n/n^{+}/n$ silicon subtrates. The width, length, and thickness of the beam was $100\;{\mu}m$, $500\;{\mu}m$, and $7\;{\mu}m$, respectively, and the diameter of the mass paddle (the region suspended by the eight beams) was 1.4 mm. The seismic mass on the mass paddle was formed about 2 mg so as to measure accelerations of the range of 50g for automotive applications. For the formation of the mass, the solder mass was loaded on the mass paddle by dispensing Pb/Sn/Ag solder paste. After the solder paste is deposited, Heat treatment was carried out on the 3-zone reflow equipment. The decay time of the output signal to impulse excitation of the fabricated sensor was observed for approximately 30 ms. The sensitivity measured through summing circuit was 2.9 mV/g and the nonlinearity of the sensor was less than 2% of the full scale output. The output deviation of each bridge was ${\pm}4%$. The cross-axis sensitivity was within 4% and the resonant frequency was found to be 2.15 KHz from the FEM simulation results.