Flow similariy applied in convection-based tilt sensor

The environment temperature has inevitable effects on property of the convect ion-based tilt sensors. It not only redefines the application, but also prevents the improvement of the sensor performance. Numerical simulation of the fluid flow in the chamber of a sensor was performed and the influence of the environment temperature was studied in this paper. At zero tilt angle, the temperature distribution along the perpendicular line cross the heat source at various environment temperatures was presented. It was found that the flow varied dramatically at different environment temperatures, which would cause the output signal vary accordingly, even when the tilt angle was kept at a constant, because this device works by sensing the change of flow. At the same condition, we present the numerical results when the temperature difference across the heat source and the environment was kept at the same, in those results, it was found that the temperature difference at every point along the perpendicular line cross the heat source keep the same, this result confirms the similarity principle of nature convection. Second, A method of eliminating environment temperature infect on property of convect ion-based tilt sensor, which is based on the theory of flow similarity, is proposed. It was found that a thermal transistance can be piped on the circuit of heat source to compensate the temperature of the heat source. A compensative circuit was specially designed which can keep flow similarity by changing heat source temperature in order to eliminate the influence of environment temperature. The experiment results show that above 70% temperature drift can be eliminated by this compensative circuit.