Wire tension monitor for proportional chambers of the ANKE spectrometer

A high accuracy wire tension monitor for wire detectors has been developed. The tension is deduced from the wire mechanical resonance frequency. The resonance frequency is measured in the electrostatic excitation mode of wire oscillation. The Sensor converts the wire capacitance into a voltage which is analyzed in process of searching for the wire resonance frequency. The solution of the equation of forced wire oscillation is presented and analyzed in detail to improve accuracy of the wire tension measurement. The monitor has been used for testing multiwire proportional chambers of the ANKE spectrometer at COSY. It allows the wire tension to be measured with an accuracy of 0.7% which meets most requirements of the wire detectors. The possibility of the wire aging diagnostics at tension measurement is considered.