Force Sensors across a spine

1

Hi all,

I’m working on a project to measure for loads across spinal segments. Basically we’re sending a segment of spine up in a rocket and want to measure the forces/stress/strain across different elements of the spine.

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Just after some advice as to devices which would generate:

  1. a heat map of compression across the orange squares in the image above
  2. something that could measure strain/tension in the vertical orange band and yellow band.

Any ideas?

Thanks Gang

Rui

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2

Hi Rui,

I’m not the most mechanically minded but I’m not even sure where to start with this one. There isn’t exactly a hard reference point to measure the strain against. If you wanted to mount a stain gauge to the spine segment you could measure it, but it may influence the behaviour as it compresses the strain gauge.

If you are expecting a lot of compression and movement you could try and capture the compression movement visually with a camera and compare it later to the amount of force applied needed to replicate that compression.

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3

Hi Rui,

Welcome to the forum!!

What kind of resolution were you looking for?

You might be able to tinker with some Velostat to get the compression values for the orange portion of your build! You might have to do some calibration to get accurate results.

I very much like Trent’s idea using a camera to measure the deflection of the vertical parts.

Liam

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