A novel active suppression technology against thermal drift for ultra-precision spherical capacitive sensors

In order to solve the problem of thermal drift and further improve the performance for sensors with extreme demand for precision, based on analysis of shortcomings of existing compensation methods and characteristics of thermal drift, a novel active suppression technology against thermal drift is proposed. Considering the change of properties of reference elements in sensors caused by temperature variation is the most major factor that introduces thermal drift error, a special thermal structure is designed to provide a small environmental chamber with sub-structure design of high performance heat isolation, heat conduction and homogenization of temperature, and the temperature in the environmental chamber is controlled with high precision based on bilateral temperature adjusting with thermo electronic cooler (TEC) devices, and a compound control algorithm of Bang-Bang and anti-windup PID. Experimental results with an ultra-precision spherical capacitive sensor show thermal drift error is significantly eliminated and the precision of the sensor can reach the level of several resolutions.