A flexible and highly sensitive graphene-based strain sensor for structural health monitoring

Recently, flexible strain sensors with excellent stretchability and sensitivity have attracted increasing interests. Most flexible strain sensors have multifunctional applications in human motion monitoring, transparent and wearable electronic systems, however, they also can be applied in other fields such as structural health monitoring (SHM). In this paper, a flexible strain sensor which was assembled by adhering graphene mesh film on liquid crystal polymer substrate constructed by an efficient, low-cost fabrication strategy for applying in SHM is presented. By means of monitoring the relative resistance change of graphene mesh film of the strain sensor, the strain caused by the minor displacement of the structure could be detected. The experiment results showed that the strain sensor had a high gauge factor (375–473) under different tensile strain (0.1–1.4%) and good stability (1000 test cycles). It can be verified that the sensor has high sensitivity and good stability, which makes it have potential application in SHM.