Abstract
As the demand for medicine or chemical crystals and powders increases in society, accurate weight control draws more attention from researchers and industries. Overdose of medicine or chemicals can lead to material waste or even health problems. Accurate and reliable weight determination of chemical powder is necessary. This study presents an innovative method of weight measurement based on the vibration of a suspended beam with different mass loading. In the proposed mechanism, both ends of the beam are attached to flexible strings with one string connected to a speaker, which works as a shaker to excite the vibration of the beam with a certain frequency. The other string is connected to a soft PVDF thin film, which detects the vibration of the beam and feeds it to the data acquisition system. Frequency sweep is carried out through a LabVIEW program, where the beam vibration can be captured, and the resonant frequency can be determined by analyzing the vibration spectrum. Results show that the proposed mechanism is sensitive to the adding mass load. A COMSOL simulation of the proposed mechanism was also performed, and the frequency shift data matched the experiments. The proposed mechanism also has the potential to develop MEMS weight measurement systems for high-temperature and hazardous chemicals.
