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A circular capacitive rainfall sensor can operate from non-touch mode to touch mode; that is, under the action of enough rainwater, its movable electrode plate can form a circular contact area with its fixed electrode plate. Therefore, the weight of rainwater is borne by only its movable electrode plate in non-touch mode operation but by both its movable and fixed electrode plates in touch mode operation, and the total capacitance of its touch mode operation is much larger than that of its non-touch mode operation. Essential to its numerical design and calibration is the ability to predict the deflection shape of its moveable electrode plate to determine its total capacitance. This requires the analytical solution to the fluid–structure interaction problem of its movable electrode plate under rainwater. In our previous work, only the analytical solution for the fluid–structure interaction problem before its movable electrode plate touches its fixed electrode plate was obtained, and how to numerically design and calibrate a circular non-touch mode capacitive rainfall sensor was illustrated. In this paper, the analytical solution for the fluid–structure interaction problem after its movable electrode plate touches its fixed electrode plate is obtained, and how to numerically design and calibrate a circular touch mode capacitive rainfall sensor is illustrated for the first time. The numerical results show that the total capacitance and rainwater volume when the circular capacitive rainfall sensor operates in touch mode is indeed much larger than that when the same circular capacitive rainfall sensor operates in non-touch mode, and that the average increase in the maximum membrane stress per unit rainwater volume when the circular capacitive rainfall sensor operates in touch mode can be about 20 times smaller than that when the same circular capacitive rainfall sensor operates in non-touch mode. This is where the circular touch mode capacitive rainfall sensor excels.

A circular non-touch mode capacitive pressure sensor can operate in both transverse and normal uniform loading modes, but the elastic behavior of its movable electrode plate is different under the two different loading modes, making its input–output analytical relationships between pressure and capacitance different. This suggests that when such a sensor operates, respectively, in transverse and normal uniform loading modes, the theory of its numerical design and calibration is different, in other words, the theory for the transverse uniform loading mode (available in the literature) cannot be used as the theory for the normal uniform loading mode (not yet available in the literature). In this paper, a circular non-touch mode capacitive pressure sensor operating in normal uniform loading mode is considered. The elastic behavior of the movable electrode plate of the sensor under normal uniform loading is analytically solved with the improved governing equations, and the improved analytical solution obtained can be used to mathematically describe the movable electrode plate with larger elastic deflections, in comparison with the existing two analytical solutions in the literature. This provides a larger technical space for developing the circular non-touch mode capacitive pressure sensors used for measuring the static gas pressure (belonging to normal uniform loading).

The ability to accurately predict the shape of a transversely loaded hollow annular membrane is essential to the design of bending-free hollow annular shells of revolution, which requires a further improvement in the hollow annular membrane solution to meet the needs of this accurate prediction. In this paper, the large deflection problem of a transversely loaded hollow annular membrane is reformulated by simultaneously modifying the out-of-plane equilibrium equation and radial geometric equation, and a newer and more refined power series solution is derived. The reason why the classical radial geometry equation induces errors is revealed. The convergence and asymptotic behavior of the power series solution obtained is analyzed numerically. The newly derived solution is compared with the two previously derived solutions graphically, showing that the newly derived solution performs basically as well as expected. In addition, the anticipated use of the hollow and not-hollow annular membrane solutions for the design application of bending-free annular shells of revolution is discussed.

This paper is devoted to developing a more refined mathematical theory for designing the previously proposed membrane deflection-based rain gauges. The differential-integral equations governing the large deflection behavior of the membrane are improved by modifying the geometric equations, and more accurate power-series solutions of the large deflection problem are provided, resulting in a new and more refined mathematical theory for designing such rain gauges. Examples are presented to illustrate how to analyze the convergence of the power-series solutions and how to numerically calibrate membrane deflection-based linear rain gauges. In addition, some important issues are demonstrated, analyzed, and discussed, such as the superiority of the new mathematical theory over the old one, the reason why the classical geometric equations cause errors, and the influence of changing design parameters on the input–output relationships of rain gauges.

The Alekseev-type annular membranes here refer to annular membranes fixed at outer edges and connected with a movable, weightless, stiff, con-centric, circular thin plate at inner edges, which were proposed originally by Alekseev for bearing centrally concentrated loads. They are used to bear the pressure acting on both membranes and plates, which was proposed originally in our previous work for developing pressure sensors. The pressure is applied onto an Alekseev-type annular membrane, resulting in the parallel movement of the circular thin plate. Such a movement can be used to develop a capacitive pressure sensor using the circular thin plate as a movable electrode plate of a parallel plate capacitor. The pressure applied can be determined by measuring the change in capacitance of the parallel plate capacitor, based on the closed-form solution for the elastic behavior of Alekseev-type annular membranes. However, the previous closed-form solution is unsuitable for annular membranes with too large deflection, which limits the range of pressure operation of the developed sensors. A new and more refined closed-form solution is presented here by improving simultaneously the out-of-plane equilibrium equation and geometric equation, making it possible to develop capacitive pressure sensors with a wide range of pressure operations. The new closed-form solution is numerically discussed in its convergence and effectiveness and compared with the previous one. Additionally, its beneficial effect on developing the proposed capacitive pressure sensors is illustrated.

In a previous work by the same authors, a hollow annular membrane structure loaded transversely and uniformly was proposed, and its closed-form solution was presented; its anticipated use is for designing elastic shells of revolution. Since the height–span ratio of shells of revolution is generally desired to be as large as possible, to meet the need for high interior space, especially for the as-small-as-possible horizontal thrust at the base of shells of revolution, the closed-form solution should be able to cover annular membranes with a large deflection–outer radius ratio. However, the previously presented closed-form solution cannot meet such an ability requirement, because the previous out-of-plane equilibrium equation used the assumption of a small deflection–outer radius ratio. In this study, the out-of-plane equilibrium equation is re-established without the assumption of a small deflection–outer radius ratio, and a new and more refined closed-form solution is presented. The new closed-form solution is numerically discussed regarding its convergence and effectiveness, and compared with the old one. The new and old closed-form solutions agree quite closely for lightly loaded cases but diverge as the load intensifies. Differences in deflections, especially in stresses, are very significant when the deflection–outer radius ratio exceeds 1/4, indicating that, in this case, the new closed-form solution should be adopted in preference to the old one.

The closed-form solution of circular membranes subjected to gas pressure loading plays an extremely important role in technical applications such as characterization of mechanical properties for freestanding thin films or thin-film/substrate systems based on pressured bulge or blister tests. However, the only two relevant closed-form solutions available in the literature are suitable only for the case where the rotation angle of membrane is relatively small, because they are derived with the small-rotation-angle assumption of membrane, that is, the rotation angle θ of membrane is assumed to be small so that “sinθ = 1/(1 + 1/tan2θ)1/2” can be approximated by “sinθ = tanθ”. Therefore, the two closed-form solutions with small-rotation-angle assumption cannot meet the requirements of these technical applications. Such a bottleneck to these technical applications is solved in this study, and a new and more refined closed-form solution without small-rotation-angle assumption is given in power series form, which is derived with “sinθ = 1/(1 + 1/tan2θ)1/2”, rather than “sinθ = tanθ”, thus being suitable for the case where the rotation angle of membrane is relatively large. This closed-form solution without small-rotation-angle assumption can naturally satisfy the remaining unused boundary condition, and numerically shows satisfactory convergence, agrees well with the closed-form solution with small-rotation-angle assumption for lightly loaded membranes with small rotation angles, and diverges distinctly for heavily loaded membranes with large rotation angles. The confirmatory experiment conducted shows that the closed-form solution without small-rotation-angle assumption is reliable and has a satisfactory calculation accuracy in comparison with the closed-form solution with small-rotation-angle assumption, particularly for heavily loaded membranes with large rotation angles.

The anticipated use of a hollow linearly elastic annular membrane for designing elastic shells has provided an impetus for this paper to investigate the large deflection geometrically nonlinear phenomena of such a hollow linearly elastic annular membrane under transverse uniform loads. The so-called hollow annular membranes differ from the traditional annular membranes available in the literature only in that the former has the inner edge attached to a movable but weightless rigid concentric circular ring while the latter has the inner edge attached to a movable but weightless rigid concentric circular plate. The hollow annular membranes remove the transverse uniform loads distributed on “circular plate” due to the use of “circular ring” and result in a reduction in elastic response. In this paper, the large deflection geometrically nonlinear problem of an initially flat, peripherally fixed, linearly elastic, transversely uniformly loaded hollow annular membrane is formulated, the problem formulated is solved by using power series method, and its closed-form solution is presented for the first time. The convergence and effectiveness of the closed-form solution presented are investigated numerically. A comparison between closed-form solutions for hollow and traditional annular membranes under the same conditions is conducted, to reveal the difference in elastic response, as well as the influence of different closed-form solutions on the anticipated use for designing elastic shells.

The large deflection phenomenon of an initially flat circular membrane under out-of-plane gas pressure loading is usually involved in many technical applications, such as the pressure blister or bulge tests, where a uniform in-plane stress is often present in the initially flat circular membrane before deflection. However, there is still a lack of an effective closed-form solution for the large deflection problem with initial uniform in-plane stress. In this study, the problem is formulated and is solved analytically. The initial uniform in-plane stress is first modelled by stretching or compressing an initially flat, stress-free circular membrane radially in the plane in which the initially flat circular membrane is located, and based on this, the boundary conditions, under which the large deflection problem of an initially flat circular membrane under in-plane radial stretching or compressing and out-of-plane gas pressure loading can be solved, are determined. Therefore, the closed-form solution presented in this paper can be applied to the case where the initially flat circular membrane may, or may not, have a uniform in-plane stress before deflection, and the in-plane stress can be either tensile or compressive. The numerical example conducted shows that the closed-form solution presented has satisfactory convergence.

In this study, the problem of axisymmetric deformation of peripherally fixed and uniformly laterally loaded circular membranes with arbitrary initial stress is solved analytically. This problem could be called the generalized Föppl–Hencky membrane problem as the case where the initial stress in the membrane is equal to zero is the well-known Föppl–Hencky membrane problem. The problem can be mathematically modeled only in terms of radial coordinate owing to its axial symmetry, and in the present work, it is reformulated by considering an arbitrary initial stress (tensile, compressive, or zero) and by simultaneously improving the out-of-plane equilibrium equation and geometric equation, while the formulation was previously considered to fail to improve the geometric equation. The power-series method is used to solve the reformulated boundary value problem, and a new and more refined analytic solution of the problem is presented. This solution is actually observed to be able to regress into the well-known Hencky solution of zero initial stress, allowing the considered initial stress to be zero. Moreover, the numerical example conducted shows that the obtained power-series solutions for stress and deflection converge very well, and have higher computational accuracy in comparison with the existing solutions.

In this paper, the well-known Hencky problem—that is, the problem of axisymmetric deformation of a peripherally fixed and initially flat circular membrane subjected to transverse uniformly distributed loads—is re-solved by simultaneously considering the improvement of the out-of-plane and in-plane equilibrium equations. In which, the so-called small rotation angle assumption of the membrane is given up when establishing the out-of-plane equilibrium equation, and the in-plane equilibrium equation is, for the first time, improved by considering the effect of the deflection on the equilibrium between the radial and circumferential stress. Furthermore, the resulting nonlinear differential equation is successfully solved by using the power series method, and a new closed-form solution of the problem is finally presented. The conducted numerical example indicates that the closed-form solution presented here has a higher computational accuracy in comparison with the existing solutions of the well-known Hencky problem, especially when the deflection of the membrane is relatively large.

In this paper we reviewed the research on the dynamic response of forced vibrations of orthotropic membranes, which applies in the membrane structural engineering. We applied the large deflection theory of membranes, the D'Alembert's principle and the momentum theorem to derive the fundamental equations of forced vibrations of orthotropic membranes, which we solved according to the Lindstedt Poincaré Perturbation Method, and obtained the formula of impact load and nonlinear forced vibration deflection of rectangular membranes with four edges fixed. Then a numerical computation method for the equation was applied. The results of practical examples are shown and discussed in the paper. This paper provide a method for analyzing some practical engineering problems and furthermore the nonlinear governing equations of forced vibration and the solving method provide some theoretical foundation for the .research relating to the solving of membrane structures under dynamic loads by comprehensively considering the effects of material nonlinearity, geometric nonlinearity and viscous damping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]