A novel design of pressure sensor based on piezoelectric bending resonator is described in this paper. The resonator is isolated from and mechanically coupled to the surrounding fluid using a sealed enclosure. The pressure applied to the enclosure induces a compressive stress to the resonator and reduces its resonance frequency. In principle the mechanism allows for achieving large resonance frequency shifts close to 100% of the resonance frequency. A high-pressure sensor based on the mechanism was designed for down-hole pressure monitoring in oil wells. The sensor is potentially remotely-readable via the transmission of an electromagnetic signal down a waveguide formed by the pipes in the oil well. The details of the pressure sensor design and verification by FE analysis and initial test results of a preliminary prototype are presented in this paper.

Date Published: 20 April 2016
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 9803, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2016, 98032O (20 April 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2218583

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9803:
Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2016
Jerome P. Lynch, Editor(s)