Calibration of a HTS Based LOX 400mm Level Sensor

The measurement of the cryogen level in a cryostage of space crafts is crucial. At the same time the weight of the sensor should be small as it affects the payload fraction of the space craft. An attempt to develop a HTS based level sensor of 400 mm for Liquid Oxygen (LOX) measurement was made. In the initial phase of testing, loss of superconductivity of HTS wire in LOX inside a cryostat was noticed. Thus, a new four wall cryostat was designed to have a stable LOX level to provide thermal stability to the HTS based LOX sensor. The calibration of the developed sensor was carried out against capacitance level sensor which was pre calibrated using diode array to verify its linearity and performance for different current excitation levels. The calibrations were carried out without heater wires. The automatic data logging was accomplished using a program developed in LabVIEW 11.0.