Sensing characteristics of electrostatic inductive sensor for flow parameters measurement of pneumatically conveyed particles

The spatial sensitivity, spatial filtering effect, temporal frequency response characteristics and bandwidth are important parameters influencing the accuracy and response speed of a ring-shaped electrostatic inductive sensor. In this paper, the charge induced on the ring-shaped sensor with different geometric sizes from a single particle having a unity charge was modeled mathematically. And from the numerical solution obtained using the finite element analysis software ANSYS, the spatial sensitivity of the sensor was derived. The effect of the geometric size of the sensor on the spatial sensitivity was also investigated, and its spatial filtering fundamental theory and spatial filtering effect were also analyzed quantitatively. The temporal frequency response characteristics of the sensor were also derived. The experimental results on a gravity-fed conveyor were presented. The theoretical and experimental results obtained demonstrate that the ring-shaped sensor acts as a low-pass filter in the spatial frequency domain and its spatial frequency characteristics are closely related to the radial position of the charged particle and the axial length of the electrode. The measurement system, including the probe and signal conditioning circuit, acts as a band-pass filter, and the radial position, the axial length of the electrode, particle velocity and particle size have important effects on the temporal frequency characteristics of the measurement system.