HIGH TEMPERATURE DISPLACEMENT SENSOR

A high temperature displacement sensor based on the principle of eddy-current is investigated. A new temperature compensation technique by using eddy-current effect is presented to satisfy the special requirement at high temperature up to 550℃. The experiment shows that the temperature compensation technique leads to good temperature stability for the sensors. The variation of the sensitivity as well as the temperature drift of the sensor with temperature compensation technique is only about 7.4% and 90-350 mV at 550 ℃ compared with that at room temperature, and that of the sensor without temperature compensation technique is about 31.2% and 2-3 V at 550 ℃ compared with that at room temperature. A new dynamic calibration method for the eddy-current displacement sensor is presented, which is very easy to be realized especially in high frequency and at high temperatures. The high temperature displacement sensors developed are successfully used at temperature up to 550 ℃ in a magnetic bearing system for more than 100 h.

Design of a Reflective Intensity Optical Fibre Bundle Displacement Sensor

Optical fibre sensor has the advantages of small size,light weight,anti⁃electromagnetic interference,and high measurement accuracy,which has important applications in research and industrial production.To design an optical fibre displacement sensor(OFBDS)with simple structure and high measurement accuracy,the unified model of the commonly used OFBDS structures was proposed and the feasibility of the intensity⁃modulation of multi⁃structural optical fibre bundles was analysed based on the arrangement characteristics of the fibre bundle end⁃face.The intensity⁃modulation characteristic of different fibre bundles was analysed,and the single coil coaxial fibre bundle was chosen as the fibre probe in this study.The sensor hardware system was designed.Lastly,the calibration experiment,temperature interference experiment,changes of measured plane surface area,and the dynamic experiment were conducted.Results showed that the sensor linear measurement range was about 3 mm,and the sensor system had excellent static and dynamic characteristics.

Adaptive sampling for corrugated plate digitization using a laser displacement sensor

The surface quality of a corrugated plate directly determines the heat transfer property of the thermal power mechanical apparatus.Traditional detection methods are impractical for real-world production,being slow and destructive.In contrast,the point laser displacement sensor,employing the optical triangle method,emerges as a promising device for assessing parts with variable curvature and highly reflective surfaces.Despite its benefits,high-density sampling by an innate frequency introduces challenges such as data redundancy and a poor signal-to-noise ratio,potentially affecting the efficiency and precision of subsequent data processing.To address these challenges,adjustable frequency data sampling has been developed for this sensor,allowing adaptive sampling for corrugated plate digitization.The process begins with surface digitization to extract discrete points,which are transformed into intersection curves using the B-spline fitting technique.Subsequently,dominant points are identified,considering multigeometric constraints for curvature and arch height.Finally,the sampling signal is adjusted based on the distribution information of dominant points.Comparative results indicate that the proposed method effectively minimizes redundant sampling without compromising the accurate capture of essential geometric features.

IABC: An iteratively automatic machine learning boosted hand-eye calibration method for laser displacement sensor

An on-machine measuring(OMM)system with a laser displacement sensor(LDS)is designed for measuring free-form surfaces of hypersonic aircraft’s radomes.To improve the measurement accuracy of the OMM system,a novel Iteratively Automatic machine learning Boosted hand-eye Calibration(IABC)method is proposed.Both the hand-eye relationship and LDS measurement errors can be calibrated in one calibration process without any hardware changes via IABC.Firstly,a new objective function is derived,containing analytical parameters of the handeye relationship and LDS errors.Then,a hybrid calibration model composed of two kernels is proposed to solve the objective function.One kernel is the analytical kernel designed for solving analytical parameters.Another kernel is the automatic machine learning(AutoML)kernel designed to model LDS errors.The two kernels are connected with stepwise iterations to find the best calibration results.Compared with traditional methods,hand-eye experiments show that IABC reduces the calibration RMSE by about 50%.Verification experiments show that IABC reduces the measurement deviations by about 25%-50%and RMSEs within 40%.Even when the training data are obviously less than the test data,IABC performs well.Experiments demonstrate that IABC is more accurate than traditional hand-eye methods.

Extrinsic calibration of a laser displacement sensor in a non-contact coordinate measuring machine

In order to implement 3D scanning of those complicated parts such as blades in the aviation field,a non-contact optical measuring system is established in the paper,which integrates a laser displacement sensor,a probe head,the frame of a coordinate measuring machine（CMM）,etc.As the output of the laser sensor directly obtained possesses the 1D length of the laser beam,it needs to determine the unit direction vector of the laser beam denoted as（l,m,n）by calibration so as to convert the 1D values into 3D coordinates of target points.Therefore,an extrinsic calibration method based on a standard sphere is proposed to accomplish this task in the paper.During the calibration procedure,the laser sensor moves along with the motion of the CMM and gathers the required data on the spherical surface.Then,both the output of the laser sensor and the grating readings of the CMM are substituted into the constraint equation of the spherical surface,in which an over-determined nonlinear equation group containing unknown parameters is established.For the purpose of solving the equation group,a method based on non-linear least squares optimization is put forward.Finally,the system after calibration is utilized to measure the diameter of a metallic sphere 10 times from different orientations to verify the calibration accuracy.In the experiment,the errors between the measured results and the true values are all smaller than 0.03 mm,which manifests the validity and practicality of the extrinsic calibration method presented in the paper.

Enhancing the Linearity Characteristics of Photoelectric Displacement Sensor Based on Extreme Learning Machine Method

Photoelectric displacement sensors rarely possess a perfectly linear transfer characteristic, but always have some degree of non-linearity over their range of operation. If the sensor output is nonlinear, it will produce a whole assortment of problems. This paper presents a method to compensate the nonlinearity of the photoelectric displacement sensor based on the extreme learning machine （ELM） method which significantly reduces the amount of time needed to train a neural network with the output voltage of the optical displacement sensor and the measured input displacement to eliminate the nonlinear errors in the training process. The use of this proposed method was demonstrated through computer simulation with the experimental data of the sensor. The results revealed that the proposed method compensated the presence of nonlinearity in the sensor with very low training time, lowest mean squared error （MSE） value, and better linearity. This research work involved less computational complexity, and it behaved a good performance for nonlinearity compensation for the photoelectric displacement sensor and has a good application prospect.

MEASUREMENT OF 2-DIMENSIONAL DISPLACEMENT USING 2-D ZERO-REFERENCE MARKS

Several 2-D displacement sensing methods are reviewed. As to the crossdiffraction grating, there is no absolute zero-reference. In regards to the optical fiber method,the output signal is affected greatly by the quality of the reflecting surface and it is hard to gethigh resolution. Considering the concentric-circle gratings, the displacement can only be gainedwith complicated calculating of the experiment data. Compared with the advantages and limitations ofthe methods above, a novel 2-D zero-reference mark is especially proposed and demonstrated. Thiskind of mark has an absolute zero-reference when used in pair, and the experimental result is simpleto dispose. By superimposing a pair of specially coded 2-D marks, the correct alignment position ofthe two marks can be detected by the maximum output of the sharp intensity peak. And each slope ofthe peak is of good linearity which can be used to achieve high resolution in positioning andalignment in two dimensions. Design and fabrication of such 2-D zero-reference marks are introducedin detail. The experiment results are agreed with the theoretical ones.

Optical feedback characteristics in a dual-frequency laser during laser cavity tuning

The optical feedback characteristics in a Zeeman-birefringence dual-frequency laser are studied during the laser cavity tuning in three different kinds of optical feedback conditions： （i） only //-light is fed back; （ii） only ⊥-light is fed back; （iii） both lights are fed back. A compact displacement sensor is designed using the experimental result that there is a nearly 90 degrees phase delay between the two lights＇ cosine optical feedback signals when both lights are fed back into the laser cavity. The priority order that the two lights＇ intensity curves appear can be used for direction discrimination. The resolution of the displacement sensor is at least 79 rim, and the sensor can discriminate the target＇s moving direction easily.

Micro displacement reconstruction of self-mixing grating interferometer based on Littrow structure

An improved self-mixing grating interferometer based on the Littrow structure has been proposed in this Letter to measure displacement.The grating is integrated inside the interferometer to reduce the impact on the vibration parameters of the object caused by the grating attached to the vibrating object.The+1 st diffracted light returns to the laser cavity after being reflected by the target object,and self-mixing interference occurs.The displacement can be reconstructed by processing the self-mixing signals.The feasibility of the proposed interferometer is demonstrated by experimental measurements,and results show that it can achieve micro displacement measurement with the maximum absolute errors of less than 50 nm.

A new principle and device for large aircraft components gaining accurate support by ball joint

How to obtain an accurate support for large components by ball joint is a key process in aircraft digital assembly. A novel principle and device is developed to solve the problem. Firstly, the working principle of the device is introduced. When three or four displacement sensors installed in the localizer are touched by the ball-head, the spatial relation is calculated between the large aircraft component's ball-head and the localizer's ball-socket. The localizer is driven to achieve a new position by compensation. Relatively, a support revising algorithm is proposed. The localizer's ball-socket approaches the ball-head based on the displacement sensors. According to the points selected from its spherical surface, the coordinates of ball-head spherical center are computed by geometry. Finally, as a typical application, the device is used to conduct a test-fuselage's ball-head into a localizer's ball-socket. Positional deviations of the spherical centers between the ball-head and the ball-socket in the x, y, and z directions are all controlled within ±0.05 mm under various working conditions. The results of the experiments show that the device has the characteristics of high precision, excellent stability, strong operability, and great potential to be applied widely in the modern aircraft industry.

Triboelectric nanogenerator based on magnetically induced retractable spring steel tapes for efficient energy harvesting of large amplitude motion

The triboelectric nanogenerator has attracted global attention since it was proposed in 2012; the exploration of new applications is ongoing with much enthusiasm in this field. In this paper, we present a novel triboelectric nanogenerator based on magnetically induced retractable spring steel tapes （MR-TENG） to develop energy harvesing from large amplitude periodic motion, which is an ingenious design that employs a new material. The tape-like structural design ensures that the contact/separate direction of the friction layers is perpendicular to the direction of the external force, breaking the amplitude limitation of previous nanogenerators with vertical contact/separate motion. Combined with flexible spring steel tapes, this design enables portability thus widening its application. The working mechanism and factors that may affect the output performance are systematically studied. The results show that the maximum short-circuit current, open-circuit voltage and instantaneous power are 21 btA, 342 V, and 1.8 mW, respectively. Moreover, we also demonstrate the great potential of the MR-TENG to serve as a self-powered displacement sensor and portable emergency power supply. This work greatly widens the applications of triboelectric nanogenerators （TENGs） through new material selection and innovative structural design.

Closed-Loop Control of an XYZ Micro-Stage and Designing of Mechanical Structure for Reduction in Motion Errors

This paper presents a compact XYZ micro-stage driven by an impact driving mechanism.A moving body is translationally actuated along the X-,Y-,and Z-axes in millimeter-scale range and with nanometer-scale resolution.Cr-N thin-film strain sensors are integrated into the micro-stage for closed-loop positioning.Closed-loop control is also carried out.The motion errors in six degrees of freedom are also investigated for this micro-stage.It is clarified by analysis of finite element method that rotational motion errors around the driving axis are caused by torques due to tensions from the elastic hinges of microstage.The mechanical structure of XYZ micro-stage to cancel out the torque generated is proposed and the second prototype is fabricated.Although the rotational motion error is successfully suppressed in the second prototype,a rotational motion error of more than 0.1°remains due to remaining torque and assembly error of the elastic hinges.Then,in order to reduce the rotational motion error,the prototype is designed in which the location of elastic hinges is single-layered.By designing a mechanical structure in which torque is suppressed,all rotational motion errors are successfully reduced to less than 0.05°in the prototype with single-layer hinges.