Texile-like capacitive pressure sensor and method of mapping the pressure exerted at points of a surface of a flexible and pliable object, particularly of a sail

摘要

A device for detecting the pressure exerted at different points of a flexible and/or pliable object that may assume different shapes, comprises a plurality of capacitive pressure sensors and at least a system for biasing and reading the capacitance of the sensors. The requirements of flexibility or pliability are satisfied by capacitive pressure sensors constituted by two orthogonal sets of parallel or substantially parallel electrodes spaced, at least at each crossing between an electrode of one set and an electrode of the other set, by an elastically compressible dieletric, constituting an array of pressure sensing pixel capacitors. Further described is a method of trimming a sail for maximizing the net thrust on the windward face of the sail based on instrumentally reconstructing distribution maps of the pressure over the sail area in real time and with a certain frame rate.