EE3901/EE5901 Sensor Technologies
Week 8 — Design of capacitive sensors with arbitrary geometries

Written by A/Prof Bronson Philippa
College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University

Last week we considered capacitive sensors for plane parallel geometries. However, how would go about analysing capacitors of different geometries? In general, there is no simple formula to calculate the capacitance, and we must turn to numerical simulation on a computer.

Software requirements

A quick note about software: this week, you will use Fusion 360 as a CAD (computer aided design) tool. For a student license, please go to the Autodesk education site, and sign up with your university email address.

We will also use Matlab. JCU students can go here to install Matlab under the campus-wide license.

Week 8 Notes

Work through these notes before the lecture.

Week 8 Tutorial

Questions for you to develop your problem solving skills.