Dynamic sine calibration of pressure transducers

Abstract

Pressure transducers are frequently used in dynamic environments such as combustion engines, aerospace applications or industrial process control. Like for every measurement task it is essential to know the uncertainty of the obtained measurement result, even in a dynamic environment. But most pressure sensors are only calibrated by static calibration methods. So the frequency response of the transducer and the uncertainty for the dynamic measurement result cannot be quantified. Furthermore it is remarkable that there is no standardized method to quantify the frequency response of a pressure transducer. Hence no national standard or traceability for periodic, dynamic pressure calibration exists. Due to this lack of investigation methods the author has made an effort to develop a primary method to calibrate pressure transducers dynamically. This method allows to measure the frequency response with sufficient dynamic pressure amplitudes up to 1.2 MPa. Due to the construction of the pressure generator frequencies up to 10 kHz can be reached. In the paper the pistonphone based apparatus is presented.