Novel Anemometer Based on Inductor Bending Effect

In this letter, a novel anemometer is proposed based on the inductor bending effect for the first time. When the wind blows on the flexible substrate, the inductor on its surface bends because of the wind pressure. Therefore, the inductance decreases and can be a measure for the wind speed. Different anemometers are fabricated on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate with the thickness of 75, 125, and $175~\mu \text{m}$ . The fabricated sensors are tested in the wind tunnel, and the LCR meter is applied to read the inductance variation. The experiments demonstrate that, for height = 1, 2, 3, and 4 cm, the measuring dynamic range is about 6.4–23.9, 5–15.9, 3.3–11.2, and 2–9.6 m/s, while the sensitivity is close to 0.44, 0.49, 0.62, and 0.67 nH/(m/s), respectively. Similarly, thicker substrate can lower the sensitivity and increase the detectable maximum speed. Moreover, the anemometers with different width are tested, and it has almost no impact on the performance.