Sensors & Transducers
Volume 89 www.sensorsportal.com
Issue 3
March 2008
Editor-in-Chief: professor Sergey Y. Yurish, phone: +34 696067716, fax: +34 93 4011989,
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Yu, Haihu, Wuhan University of Technology, China
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Zeni, Luigi, Second University of Naples, Italy
Zhong, Haoxiang, Henan Normal University, China
Zhang, Minglong, Shanghai University, China
Zhang, Qintao, University of California at Berkeley, USA
Zhang, Weiping, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
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Zorzano, Luis, Universidad de La Rioja, Spain
Zourob, Mohammed, University of Cambridge, UK
 Sensors & Transducers Journal

Contents
Volume 89 www.sensorsportal.com ISSN 1726-5479
Issue 3
March 2008

Research Articles

Use of Smart Sensors in the Measurement of Power Quality

A. Moreno-Muñoz, and J. J. G. de la Rosa ........................................................................................ 1

A Multi-Channel, High-Precision Sensor Interface for Low-Power Applications – ZMD21013

Marko Mailand .................................................................................................................................... 10

Studying of a Tunneling Accelerometer with Piezoelectric Actuation and Fuzzy Controller

Ahmadali Tahmasebi Moradi, Yousef Kanani, Behrouz Tousi, Asadollah Motalebi,
and Ghader Rezazadeh ..................................................................................................................... 17

Control of Neutralization Process Using Soft Computing

G. Balasubramanian, N. Sivakumaran and T. K. Radhakrishnan ...................................................... 30

Artificially Controlling the Limb Movement of Robotic Arm Using Machine Interface with
EMG Sensor
Govind Singh Patel, Amrita Rai and Dr. S. Prasad ............................................................................ 39

Active Vibration Control of a Flexible Structure Using Piezoceramic Actuators

J. Fei ................................................................................................................................................... 52

Analysis and Implementation of Nonlinear Transducer Response over a Wider Response

Range
Sheroz Khan, AHM Zahirul Alam, Syed Masrur Ahmmad, TIJANI I. B., Muhammad Asraful Hasan,
Lawal Wahab Adetunji, Salami Femi Abdulazeez, Siti Hana Mohammad Zaini, Siti Aminah
Othman, Saman S. Khan.................................................................................................................... 61

Leak Detection and Model Analysis for Nonlinear Spherical Tank Process Using
Conductivity Sensor
P. Madhavasarma, S. Sundaram ....................................................................................................... 71

Analytical and Fundamental Study of EMATs System

A. Doniavi, M. Eskandarzade, J. Malekani......................................................................................... 77

A Modified Design of an Anemometric Flow Transducer

S. C. Bera and N. Mandal................................................................................................................... 83

A Novel Hybrid Binary Reconstruction Algorithm for Ultrasonic Tomography

M. H. Fazalul Rahiman and R. Abdul Rahim...................................................................................... 93

Authors are encouraged to submit article in MS Word (doc) and Acrobat (pdf) formats by e-mail: editor@sensorsportal.com
Please visit journal’s webpage with preparation instructions: http://www.sensorsportal.com/HTML/DIGEST/Submition.htm

International Frequency Sensor Association (IFSA).

 Sensors & Transducers Journal, Vol. 89, Issue 3, March 2008, pp. 17-29

Sensors & Transducers

ISSN 1726-5479
© 2008 by IFSA
http://www.sensorsportal.com

Studying of a Tunneling Accelerometer with Piezoelectric

Actuation and Fuzzy Controller
1
Ahmadali Tahmasebi Moradi, 2Yousef Kanani, 3Behrouz Tousi,
4
Asadollah Motalebi, and 5Ghader Rezazadeh
1,2,5
Mech. Eng. Dept. Urmia University, Urmia, Iran
4
Mech. Eng. Dept. Khoy Azad University, Khoy, Iran
3
Elec. Eng. Dept. Urmia University, Urmia, Iran
5
E-mail: g.rezazadeh@mail.urmia.ac.ir

Received: 10 February 2008 /Accepted: 17 March 2008 /Published: 24 March 2008

Abstract: This report demonstrates the design of closed-loop micro accelerometer sensor. Proposed
sensor consists of a polysilicon cantilever micro beam as a proof mass and uses the extreme sensitivity
of electron tunneling to variations in electrode separation as sensing element of the sensor. The model
uses piezoelectric forces as an actuating element to control the separation between the tunneling
electrodes with a low voltage due to large piezoelectric constant. In order to have a proper response
time a Fuzzy controller is considered which can be very useful, fast, and reliable. The inputs for the
mentioned controller are tunneling current error, gradient of the tunneling current and the summation
of errors. And the output is the piezoelectric voltage. Due to the simulation and its results, it is seen
that the proposed micro accelerometer have high linearity and dynamic range and also have good
respond to the step and sinusoidal acceleration. Copyright © 2008 IFSA.

Keywords: Micro acceleration, Piezoelectric, Tunneling current, Fuzzy controller

1. Introduction
Miniaturization has been one of the most important technological trends in the last decades.
Microminiaturization of mechanical components was started from the microfabricated sensors and was
followed by microfabricated parts, such as beams and membranes, and microactuators. In recent years
the integration of microelectronics, micromechanisms, microsensors and microactuators into
microsystems has become one of the most prominent research areas all over the world.

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 Sensors & Transducers Journal, Vol. 89, Issue 3, March 2008, pp. 17-29

One kind of micro sensors is micro accelerometers. Accelerometers measure acceleration, vibration
and shock. Commonly there is a proof mass in accelerometers that acceleration affects it, and with
respect to its movement and its mass, acceleration will be measured. The difference between
accelerometers comes from its structure and method of sensing and actuating corresponding with
acceleration. At the heart of MEMS accelerometer is the micro-mechanical structure which, due to the
acceleration, alters its stiffness, mass or shape. Micro-mechanical elements are typically attached to the
substrate, e.g. with supporting beams or tethers [1, 2].

There are various kinds of measurement mechanisms of the accelerometers, like capacitive,
piezoelectric, piezoresistive, tunneling current and so on. One of the most sensitive and recent
accelerometers are based on the variation of tunneling current. Tunneling accelerometer has three
advantages: one is the super sensitivity caused by the exponential relation between the tunneling
current and the distance. The second is that its sensitivity reduction due to the volume reduction is less
than capacitive devices because the sensitive area is smaller than 1µ m 2 . The third is that the feedback
circuit is simpler than that of a capacitive accelerometer [3-14].

MEMS accelerometers are founded in open-loop and close-loop mode. For static/low frequency
applications, which do not require a high degree of accuracy, they can be used in open-loop
(compensated or uncompensated) but for higher precision applications, negative feedback must be
used to increase linearity, bandwidth and dynamic range. Nowadays researches in close-loop
accelerometer are focused on increasing the dynamic range and bandwidth and decreasing noise
effects, and designing better controller that have good response to different external accelerations such
as step and sinusoidal acceleration. For the closed-loop accelerometer, it has to be noted that an
actuation mechanism is needed. These mechanisms are mainly based on electrostatic, magnetic,
thermal or piezoelectric actuation.

The preponderance of MEMS literature utilizes electrostatic actuation of flexural structures.

Electrostatics is relatively easy to implement, and offers the possibility of large amplitude actuation,
though typically at the cost of large driving voltages and substantial hysteresis. Current-based
actuation approaches, such as those utilized in many thermal and magnetically driven devices,
typically require high power to operate, and in some cases are inherently slow (e.g. due to thermal time
constants). In contrast, the piezoelectric effect can be utilized to drive large displacements in MEMS
structures at modest voltages, low powers, and with low hysteresis. Piezoelectricity shows good
scaling with size. That is, the energy density available for actuation remains high, even as device sizes
drop. The piezoelectric materials have ability to provide electrical signals to drive or sense the device.
However, the researches on using piezoelectric materials to enhance the controlling or improvement of
MEMS structures behaviors such as pull-in voltage are considered recently [15].

Closed loop accelerometers are mostly based on the PID controllers, since using of Fuzzy controllers
or combination of common controllers corresponding with Fuzzy controller aren’t attracted much
attention from the scientific community. The Fuzzy Logic Control uses the qualitative aspects of the
human decision process to construct the control algorithm. The Fuzzy Logic Control achieved all the
goals that the PID and sliding mode control are normally used to achieve. For the last 20 years, Fuzzy
Control Theory has emerged as a fruitful approach to a wide variety of control problems. Fuzzy logic
was first proposed by Lotfi A. Zadeh of the University of California at Berkeley in a 1965 paper[16] ;
he elaborated on his ideas in a 1973 paper that introduced the concept of "linguistic variables" [17]. In
his approach, a Fuzzy implication is defined as a Fuzzy Cartesian product. Based on Zadeh's definition
of implication, Mamdani built the first fuzzy logic controller [18]. Such controller may be used in
various mechanisms, for instance it can be used in micro accelerometer.

Fuzzy controllers use the linguistic rules for controlling systems, so it is quite suitable for the unknown
or non-linear systems that could not be controlled easily with classical control approach like PID
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 Sensors & Transducers Journal, Vol. 89, Issue 3, March 2008, pp. 17-29

controller to achieving desired purpose. Fuzzy controllers also have better performance from other
control methods, if well designed. Combining Fuzzy controllers with other classical method lead to
robustness controller such as PID-Fuzzy controller.

In this paper a new closed-loop micro accelerometer with a pair of piezoelectric layers is presented
which has the characteristic of low actuation voltage to the piezoelectric layers, high sensitivity due to
the tunneling measurement, and high linear range to measure the acceleration by means of the closed-
loop mechanism. The accelerometer is modeled into a lump model. Piezoelectric layers is used to
apply a oppose moment to control the displacement of the micro accelerometer which cause to
increase the range of the measurement corresponding to low actuation voltage. The PID-Fuzzy
controller is applied in order to control the actuation voltage to the piezoelectric layers. The obtained
results prove the characteristics of the proposed micro accelerometer are highly acceptable.

2. Electromechanical Behavior of Micro accelerometer

2.1. Model Description and Assumptions

As it is shown in the Fig. 1, assume a beam with thickness h , width w , length L , density ρ and
isotropic with Young’s modulus E that has piezoelectric layers bonded on its top and bottom surfaces.
The piezoelectric layers are located throughout the beam length. And have thickness h1 , density ρ 0 ,

Young’s modulus E P and equivalent piezoelectric coefficient for one-dimensional problem e31 .
Suppose that y is the coordinate along the length of the beam with its origin at the left end, and u ( y ) is
the deflection of the beam, defined to be positive downward.

Fig.1. Schematic of the micro accelerometer.

Microbeams are usually modeled as continuous and prismatic straight beams, made of elastic and
homogeneous material [19], with principal axes of elasticity equally directed for all sections. The
above assumption allows uncoupling flexural, torsional and axial behaviors. Since the flexural
behavior is here mainly considered, transverse displacement and rotation are suitable to write
equilibrium equations.

2.2. Mathematical Model for Micro Accelerometer

For preliminary analysis, as it is shown in Fig. 2 a low-order model is considered by assimilating the
micro accelerometer to a system with lumped parameters.

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 Sensors & Transducers Journal, Vol. 89, Issue 3, March 2008, pp. 17-29

Fig. 2. Lumped electromechanical model.

The dynamic equation for the micro accelerometer can be written as:

m&x& + bx& + kx = Fa − F p with Fa = ma , (1)

whereas m is the proof mass, b is the damping coefficient, k is the equivalent stiffness, a is the
external acceleration impose to the system and F p is the equivalent force of the piezoelectric layers.

2.2.1. Equivalent Stiffness

Without considering shear strain of the beam, based on the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory, the
equivalent stiffness for a cantilever beam can be written as:

3EI
k= , (2)
L3
wh 3
where I = is the moment of inertia of the cross-sectional area. For a wide beam, for which
12
~ E ~
w ≥ 5h , the effective modulus E can be approximated by the plate modulus , otherwise E is
(1 − υ )
2

the Young's modulus E where υ is the Poisson’s Ratio.

2.2.2. Equivalent Mass

With considering the first mode for the vibration of the micro cantilever beam, the equivalent mass can
be expressed as:

m ϕ& 2 ( L) L 1
=∫ ρ Aϕ& 2 ( y ) dy , (3)
2 0 2

where ϕ is the first mode shape of a cantilever beam, A is the cross sectional area and ρ is the beam
density.

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 Sensors & Transducers Journal, Vol. 89, Issue 3, March 2008, pp. 17-29

2.2.3. Damping Coefficient

There are two sources of mechanical damping: the structural damping: and the viscous damping by gas
flow. The damping in the high Q materials (i.e. CMOS MEMS) is very low. Thus, damping in mainly
MEMS devices caused by viscous flow gas of surrounding the micro structures.

Damping coefficient can be varies with mechanical properties and dominate pressure in accelerometer.
The dominant damping mechanism in lateral accelerometer is squeeze-film damping. For rectangular
plate, the damping coefficient is based on the evaluations by [20], namely:

96 µ L w 3
b= ,
π 4 (g 0 − x )
3 (4)

where g 0 is the initial Gap or initial distance between plate and the ground and µ is the viscosity of
the gas.

2.2.4. Equivalent Piezoelectric Force

The stress in the piezoelectric layer accounting for electro-mechanical effects can be expressed as [21]:

d 2u
σ y = −EP z − e31 E e , (5)
dy 2

where the over-bar represents the parameters in the piezoelectric layer and E e is the electric field in
the piezoelectric layer which is E e = VP / hP . In this model, two piezoelectric layers are bounded top
and bottom through out the length of the beam. The forces in the piezoelectric layers are opposed to
each other direction due to the difference direction of applied voltage to the each piezoelectric layers
V p . The applied force by piezoelectric layers as pointed out by [21] can be written as:

⎛ d 2u ⎞ h / 2+ h p ⎛ d 2u ⎞
⎜ − EP z − e31 (−VP / hP ) ⎟bdz
h/2
P=∫ ⎜⎜ − Ez 2 ⎟⎟bdz + ∫
−h / 2
⎝ dy ⎠ h/2 ⎜ dy 2 ⎟
⎝ ⎠
, (6)
−h / 2 ⎛ d 2u ⎞
+∫ ⎜ − E P z 2 − e31 (VP / hP ) ⎟bdz = 0
−h / 2−h p ⎜ dy ⎟
⎝ ⎠

⎛ d 2u ⎞ h / 2+ h p ⎛ d 2u ⎞
z − E P z 2 − e31 (−VP / hP ) ⎟bdz ,
⎜
h/2
M y = 2∫ z ⎜⎜ − Ez 2 ⎟⎟bdz + 2∫ (7)
0
⎝ dy ⎠ h/2 ⎜ dy ⎟
⎝ ⎠

By integrating of the Eq. (7), we have:

2
~ d u d 2u
M y = − EI 2 − E P I P 2 + M p , (8)
dy dy

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 Sensors & Transducers Journal, Vol. 89, Issue 3, March 2008, pp. 17-29

bhP3 h + hP 2
whereas M P = e31VP b(h + h p ) and I P = 2( + bhP ( ) ) . Therefore, the bending moment can be
12 2
written as follow:

d 2 u( y)
M y = −η +Mp, (9)
dy 2

~
whereas η = EI + E P I P . To determine the equivalent piezoelectric force, the other forces on the beam
are neglected. This can be written as: M y = 0 . Thus the equivalent piezoelectric force which is
accounted for the lump model can be expressed as:

F p = k u (L) , (10)

where u (L) is the tip displacement of the micro accelerometer due to the piezoelectric moment.

2.3. Sensing Approach and Operating Principle

Tunneling current ( I t ) is a reference for sensing beam deflection. The relationship between I t and
distance between tunneling tip and conductive surface is given by:

(
I t = Vb exp − α I s )
Φ , with s = g 0 − x (11)

where Vb is tunneling bias across electrode gap, α I = 1.025(A o −1eV −0.5 ) is a constant, s is tunneling gap
and Φ is the effective height of the tunneling barrier. According to experimental results, the effective
barrier height is considered as: Φ = 0.1685 [22].

Sensor measures acceleration with respect to variation of tunneling current. A Controller has been
designed to make beam position zero, this can be achieved with applying voltage to piezoelectric
layers. This voltage is the sensor output which is used to calculate input acceleration. The gain that
must be multiplied to piezoelectric voltage to calculate the input acceleration can be obtained from
sensor simulation and tests. The block diagram of the closed-loop system is shown in the Fig. 3:

Fig. 3. Block diagram of the closed-loop system.

2.4. Design of Fuzzy Controller

Fuzzy controller is developed to control the beam deflection about its static position, and increase the
sensor measuring range. The fuzzy control system generates the control action from a set of rules
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 Sensors & Transducers Journal, Vol. 89, Issue 3, March 2008, pp. 17-29

representing the heuristic knowledge about the plant to be controlled [23]. Fuzzy controller consists off
three steps:

1- Fuzzification
2- Rule base decision
3- Defuzzification

A crisp data as input is converted to degree of membership for any linguistic condition by a look up in
one or several membership functions. Decision makes by rule base part that includes IF-THEN rule
created by expert knowledge. And defuzzification gives a crisp data for output from fuzzy outputs.

The input of the designed controller is based on tunneling current, gradient of tunneling current and
summation of errors and the piezoelectric voltage is the output. The input and output membership
functions are shown in Fig. 4. and Fig. 5, respectively. Tunneling current changes exponentially due to
the tunneling gap, so this sensor has different behavior for positive and negative acceleration. For the
equal negative and positive acceleration, if the controller rules are the same for those accelerations,
larger deflection would be obtained for the negative acceleration than the positive one. Therefore, in
this design has been tried to have a better performance for the negative acceleration, so current
memberships designed exact symmetric to beam deflection not to tunneling current.

NL NS ZO PS PL NL NS ZO PS PL
1 1

0.8 0.8
Degree of membership

Degree of membership

0.6 0.6

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2

0 0

-1 0 1 2 -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5

10 10 10 10
current (nA) current's derivate *107

NL NS ZO PS PL
1

0.8
Degree of membership

0.6

0.4

0.2

-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
integral of current errors

Fig. 4. Input membership functions.

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 Sensors & Transducers Journal, Vol. 89, Issue 3, March 2008, pp. 17-29

NH NL NS ZO PS PL PH NL NS ZO PS PL
1 1

0.8 0.8

Degree of membership
Degree of membership

0.6
0.6

0.4
0.4

0.2
0.2

0
0
-0.01 -0.008 -0.006 -0.004 -0.002 0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01
-6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 piezoelectric's voltage
piezoelectric's voltage -3
x 10

(a) (b)

Fig. 5. Output membership functions, a) for PD controller Output, b) for D and I controllers.

Labels NH, NL, NS, ZO, PS, PL and PH represent the negative huge, negative large, negative small,
zero, positive small, positive large and positive huge respectively.

The fuzzy logic rules are similar the below example:

IF (P, D) THEN V,

where P and D are fuzzy sets for current and gradient of the current as inputs and V is output fuzzy set
to determine output voltage.

PID Fuzzy controller designed as three separate controllers, that output voltage for piezoelectric comes
from summation of this controllers. It has been in this way to have a good adjustment for the fuzzy
controller to achieve best performance. First is a D controller for removing oscillation, second is PD
controller, cause to minimizing deflection and third is I controller to make deflection about zero.

To achieve desired voltage, the rules of D, PD, and I controller are shown in Table 1, 2 and 3. PD
controller uses the min intersection operator and all controllers use centroid method for
defuzzification.

Table 1. D FUZZY Control Rules.

dI NL NS ZO PS PL
V NL NS ZO PS PL

Table 2. PD FUZZY Control Rules.

I
NL NS ZO PS PL
dI
NL PL PL ZO ZO ZO
NS PL PS ZO NS NS
ZO PS PS ZO NS NS
PS PS PS ZO NS NL
PL ZO ZO ZO NL NL
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 Sensors & Transducers Journal, Vol. 89, Issue 3, March 2008, pp. 17-29

Table 3. I FUZZY Control Rules.

∑ (I − I 0 ) NL NS ZO PS PL
V NL NS ZO PS PL

Defuzzifier factors, KD, KPD and KI were used to easily tune the effect of each controller.

4. Numerical Results and Discussion

For this simulation, quality factor is considered 1. The geometrical and material properties of used
model and defuzzifier factors are listed in Table 4 as:

Table 4. Geometrical and material properties of the MEM actuator and piezoelectric layers.

MEM Actuator Piezoelectric layer (PZT-4)

Length 270 µm 270 µm
Width 60 µm 60 µm
Height 2 µm 0.01 µm
Young’s modulus 190 (GPa) 78.6 (GPa)
Poisson’s ratio 0.06 0.3
Mass density 2331 (Kg/m3) 7500 (Kg/m3)
e31 - (
-9.29 N
volt.m
)
g 0 (initial gap) 1.5 µm
ε (Permittivity of air) 8.854187×10-12 (F/m)
Defuzzifier
factors
KD = 0.9 KPD = 0.3 KI = 0.5

Step response of sensor for applied acceleration 5 g and -5 g shows in Fig. 6. As it can be seen, sensor
responses are different for the positive and negative acceleration, although have a robust behavior in
negative acceleration. Deflection is very small (about 1 A o ) and Response time is about 25 µs.

Controller's outputs are shown in Fig. 7 for applied acceleration 5g, and -5g, respectively.

Behavior of system due to harmonic accelerations simulated with maximum acceleration of 5 g for
30 KHz and 50 g for 1 KHz. As can be seen, this sensor has good results in harmonic acceleration with
considering its relative lower deflection (Fig.8-11).

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Sensors & Transducers Journal, Vol. 89, Issue 3, March 2008, pp. 17-29
-11 deflection of beam for step acceleration input
x 10
10
+5g
-5g
8

deflection
2

-2

-4
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
time x 10
-4

Fig. 6. Step response for applied acceleration 5g and -5g.

-4
x 10 pizoeelectric voltage
1.5

1 5g
-5g

0.5
pizeoelectric voltage [V]

-0.5

-1

-1.5

-2
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
time x 10
-4

Fig. 7. Piezoelectric voltage for applied acceleration 5g and -5g.

-11
x 10 deflection of beam for step acceleration input
8

2
deflection

-2

-4

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

time x 10
-4

Fig. 8. Deflection vs. time for 5g 30 KHz.

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Sensors & Transducers Journal, Vol. 89, Issue 3, March 2008, pp. 17-29
-4
x 10 pizoeelectric voltage
1.5

pizeoelectric voltage [V]

0.5

-0.5

-1

-1.5
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
time -4
x 10

Fig. 9. Piezoelectric voltage vs. time for 5 g 30 KHz.

-11 deflection of beam for step acceleration input

x 10
6

0
deflection

-2

-4

-6

-8
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
time x 10
-3

Fig. 10. Deflection vs. time for 50g 1 KHz.

-3
x 10 pizoeelectric voltage
1.5

1
pizeoelectric voltage [V]

0.5

-0.5

-1

-1.5
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
time x 10
-3

Fig. 11. Piezoelectric voltage vs. time for 50 g 1 KHz.

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 Sensors & Transducers Journal, Vol. 89, Issue 3, March 2008, pp. 17-29

As it is shown in Fig. 12, the Linearity of the designed sensor is about << 1%.
-4
x 10
2

voltage [V] 0

-1

-2
-6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6
input acceleration [g]

Fig. 12. Piezoelectric voltage vs. acceleration.

Conclusion
The primary of this work was to demonstrate a micro accelerometer with high sensitivity due to
exponential relationship between tunneling electrodes and tunneling current. And use very low
controlling voltage due to large piezoelectric constant. Because of a highly fast, reliable and precise
controller was needed, the Fuzzy controller was implemented. The simulation results showed that the
proposed micro accelerometer can be used for a 5g and -5g step acceleration with a 25 µs response
time without contacting the tunneling electrodes. And also can be used for measuring a harmonic
acceleration with 5 g, 30 KHz and 50 g, 1 KHz.

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