Determination of Viscoelastic Properties For Soft Tissues Using Piezoelectric Bender

The mechanical properties for soft tissues become a new biomarker in the diseases diagnosing field and biomedical Robots. Measuring such properties can help surgeons in diagnosing during minimally invasive surgery (MIS). Furthermore, building a transducer capable of measuring viscoelastic properties could be used in industrial Robot's end effector for handling and grasping tasks. Here, we build a model for a new tactile sensor to measure the mechanical properties for the soft tissue. The proposed model for the sensor is simply consisting of a piezoelectric (PZT) benders, brass layer and prop. These PZT materials are easy to control, have a good frequency response, can be easily miniaturized and integrated into a MEMS system. Moreover, Jacobsen's approach is used to calculate the equivalent damping coefficient based on dissipated work. Three PDMS samples imitating human tissue are used to evaluate the sensor's model. The results show the sensor capability to measure the damping coefficient for soft materials.