A methodology for studying the dependence of electrical resistivity with pressure in conducting composites

This work describes a simple and useful methodology based on electrical-mechanical data taken under dynamic conditions to evaluate the effectiveness of a conducting composite as a pressure sensor. This method utilizes the compression force applied by a universal testing machine and relates this value to the corresponding resistivity value given by an electrometer, using a computer program developed in our laboratory. The proposed methodology was employed on conducting composites constituted of polyaniline as the conducting filler dispersed into styrene-butadiene (SBS) block copolymer as the insulating polymer matrix. The compression sensitivity and the hysteresis of these materials were investigated.