Development of quartz tuning fork temperature sensors

A temperature sensing technique taking thermal sensitive quartz tuning fork vibration arm as sensitive components and output of digital frequency is presented. In the design of quartz tuning fork temperature sensor, selecting the cut type of quartz tuning fork according to the each anisotropic nature of quartz tuning fork, so that there is a linear relationship between quartz tuning fork frequency and environment temperature. Based on the principle of mechanical vibration, deriving differential equations of tuning fork resonator vibration, extracting characteristic parameters, analyzing the temperature-frequency characteristics, conducting optimum design of structure is performed. We evaluate the sensor through the established quartz tuning fork temperature sensor test system. The experimental results show that the sensor can work within -50square~+200square, the measurement accuracy is up to 0.05square, and it has a good long-term stability.