Performance Enhancement in Stainless Steel Pressure Sensor

Abstract

A piezoelectric resonant pressure sensor fabricated with stainless steel with a modified design to improve its performance is proposed in this work. The sensor consists of a stainless steel diaphragm, inclined trusses, hinged vertical mounts, and a resonating doubly clamped beam. The deflection of the diaphragm with applied pressure is transferred to the resonating beam via a stress transmission mechanism comprising of inclined trusses and vertical mounts. The sensor is fabricated with SS 304 grade stainless steel using electrical discharge machining (EDM) and wire-cut EDM process. The sensor was tested for its characteristics for an input pressure of 0–25 bar. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed sensor was found to have better linearity, higher sensitivity, and low hysteresis as compared to a similar pressure sensor existing in the literature. Sensor design is simple; fabrication involves well-known machining process, self-packed, and hence cost effective.