Calculating Capacitance from displacement data analysis from fusion360

I am designing a capacitive tactile sensor. I modeled my design on fusion360 and ran displacement and modal analysis. I am trying to figure out how to calculate capacitance change by using Matlab based on the displacement analysis. Can anyone help with this?

[William Rose]

@Collins Nwafor, please provide more information. What wexactly is fusion360? (If that is relevant.) Share some data, either real or simulated. Share the code you have attempted, even if it does not run yet.

[Collins Nwafor]

So I am trying to calculate capacitance change using displacement in matlab. Fusion 360 is a computer aided design software where I have designed the capacitive tactile sensor in 3-D. However, fusion360 does not have the a function to determine capacitane change but I have been told that I can do it in matlab. The data for displacement is in 3-D.

[William Rose]

@Collins Nwafor,

I am not aware of a general matlab funciton for calculating capacitance of an arbitrary shape. If you have one or more equations for capacitance that applies to the shape of your device, Matlab will be good at solving those equations. But you will have to supply a description of the shape and its displacement, and you will have to supply the equations to be solved. That is just my guess.

Answer 1

[Anshuman]

I am assuming that your workflow is based on the basic approach to find the capacitance of a parallel-plate capacitor:

[ C = (epsilon_r * epsilon_0* A)/d ]

where:

• ( C ) is the capacitance,
• ( epsilon_r ) is the relative permittivity of the dielectric material,
• ( epsilon_0 ) is the vacuum permittivity
• ( A ) is the area of overlap of the two plates, and
• ( d ) is the separation distance between the two plates.

The following steps might be helpful for you to calculate the change in capacitance using MATLAB, based on displacement analysis:

• Export the displacement data from Fusion 360 and import it into MATLAB. Make sure the data includes the deformation of the sensor structure under different applied forces or pressures.
• Process the imported data to calculate the new separation distance ((d)) between the plates and any changes in the area of overlap ((A)) for the different states of deformation.
• Use the processed displacement data to calculate the new capacitance values. You can create a MATLAB function or script that takes the original and deformed geometries to calculate the change in capacitance.

In case of a tactile sensor with a very complexy geometry, you may need to account for non-uniform electric fields, edge effects, or multiple sensing elements. If your sensor design is significantly complex, you might need to use numerical methods or finite element analysis (FEA) software in conjunction with MATLAB to calculate the capacitance changes accurately.