|Número de publicación||US7249516 B2|
|Tipo de publicación||Concesión|
|Número de solicitud||US 11/146,721|
|Fecha de publicación||31 Jul 2007|
|Fecha de presentación||7 Jun 2005|
|Fecha de prioridad||28 Jul 2004|
|También publicado como||US20060021442|
|Número de publicación||11146721, 146721, US 7249516 B2, US 7249516B2, US-B2-7249516, US7249516 B2, US7249516B2|
|Inventores||Michael D. Borenstein, Paul C. Arnold|
|Cesionario original||Brooks Automation, Inc.|
|Exportar cita||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Citas de patentes (47), Citada por (1), Clasificaciones (10), Eventos legales (6)|
|Enlaces externos: USPTO, Cesión de USPTO, Espacenet|
This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/070,819, filed Mar. 1, 2005, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No. 10/900,504, filed Jul. 28, 2004 now abandoned. The entire teachings of the above applications are incorporated herein by reference.
The rate of heat transfer through a gas is a function of the gas pressure. Thus, under certain conditions, measurements of heat transfer rates from a heated sensing element can, with appropriate calibration, be used to determine the gas pressure. This principal is used in the well-known Pirani gauge.
Many Pirani gauges comprise temperature sensitive sensing and compensating resistances in separate legs of a Wheatstone bridge. The compensating resistance is sized to minimize self-heating with current applied through the two resistances. The resultant resistance differences with heating of the sensing resistor is indicative of pressure of the surrounding environment.
In more recent heat loss gauge implementations presented in U.S. Pat. No. 6,658,941, the sensing element and compensating element are of like dimensions, but an additional heating current is applied to the sensing element to boost its temperature. Again, the relative resistances of the sensing and compensating elements with increase in temperature of the sensing element are indicative of the pressure of the surrounding environment. One implementation relies on a Wheatstone bridge, while another relies on a fixed ratio of current flow through the resistive elements under control of a feedback circuit responsive to the sensed resistances.
The present invention relates to an improvement to a heat-loss gauge which has the potential of providing higher performance at a reduced cost due to the ability to rely on less precise components. Rather than controlling current source ratios as in an implementation of U.S. Pat. No. 6,658,941, the present system controls power to the sensing and compensating elements using asymmetrical switching techniques.
An electrical source is connected to switch current between the sensing element and compensating element, preferably from a common current source. Current is applied to the sensing element over a longer duty cycle to heat the sensing element relative to the compensating element. Measuring circuitry determines gas pressure in the environment to which the elements are exposed based on electrical response of the sensing element and the compensating element.
In certain embodiments, current is applied to the sensing element and compensating element at fixed duty cycles and current level is controlled. In other embodiments, the applied current is fixed and duty cycle of current to at least one of the sensing element and compensating element is controlled. In yet other embodiments, both the current and the duty cycles are controlled.
The gas pressure may be determined based on the level of heating current through the sensing element and/or the resulting voltage across the sensing element.
In various embodiments, the compensating element is in series with a fixed resistive element. The electrical source applies current to heat the sensing element to a temperature at which the resistance of the sensing element matches the combined resistance of the compensating element and the fixed resistive element. In certain embodiments, the fixed resistive element is only in series with the compensating element, and the voltage across the compensating element and fixed resistive element is compared to a voltage across the sensing element to control the switched current. In other embodiments, the fixed resistive element is in series with both the sensing element and the compensating element, and the voltage across the fixed resistive elements is added to the voltage across the compensating element and fixed resistive element for comparison to a voltage across the sensing element and fixed resistive element.
The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following more particular description of preferred embodiments of the invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings in which like reference characters refer to the same parts throughout the different views. The drawings are not necessarily to scale, emphasis instead being placed upon illustrating the principles of the invention.
A description of preferred embodiments of the invention follows.
At low pressures heat does not conduct as readily from the resistor to the surrounding environment. As a result, at low pressures, the resistance Rs will increase to a greater amount with a given input, or will require a lesser power input to increase to a given resistance. The extent to which the resistance Rs increases over the resistance Rc is readily determined by connecting a non-temperature dependent differential resistance Rd in series with Rc and driving the resistance Rs to a level at which Rs equals Rc plus Rd. The electrical input required to maintain that equality of resistances can then be used to compute pressure. Alternative approaches might, for example, rely on measurements of Rs and Rc that are digitized and processed in a microprocessor without the series resistance Rd.
The cycle period of this process is kept much shorter than the thermal time constant of the sensor wires so that the temperatures, and therefore the resistances, of the elements do not change as the current is switched back and forth.
A fixed resistor Rd is inserted in series with Rc to form a sum of a temperature-dependent and a non-temperature-dependent resistance. When switch S3 is passing the current from current source I1 through Rc, S1 closes and charges capacitor C1 to the peak voltage V1 present at the top of Rd (signal v1). Then, when S3 switches the current from I1 to Rs, S1 opens and S2 closes, charging capacitor C2 to the peak voltage V2 present at the top of Rs (signal v2). Thus, the voltages V1 and V2 are charged to the peak values of signals v1 and v2.
Since the low sides of Rs and Rc are connected together, V1 will equal V2 when the resistance of Rs=Rc+Rd. The difference V1−V2 is amplified in the high-gain integrating amplifier A1 which drives the dependent current source I1 to the proper level to maintain the conditions of equal voltages and equal resistances. The gain of amplifier A1 is sufficiently high to keep the error between V1 and V2 negligible, and the time response of amplifier A1 is slow enough to assure that current source I1 cannot change value during the switching cycle time.
Current meter Is measures the sensing element current. For a steady pressure in the gauge, amplifier A1 holds the current of I1 equal for both parts of the switching cycle, causing the current through meter Is to be a steady DC level equal to that of the current of source I1. Thus, the current measured in current meter Is is equal to the peak sensing element current Is, which is equal to the current of source I1. The average voltage across Rs is developed across C3 of an RC filter with a time constant somewhat longer than the cycle time of the current switching cycle. The average sensing element voltage Vs and the current Is are converted to a digital format using standard A/D conversion techniques. A digital processor then calculates pressure as a function of Vs and Is using an algorithm that was developed using empirical 3-D surface fitting techniques as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,023,979 and 6,658,941.
The present switched design allows for a reduction in the precision components which were used in the implementation of
The actual functioning circuit design is shown in
In this circuit, the current source I1 is comprised of an FET Q1 and resistors R1 and R2. The switch S3 comprises FETs Q2 and Q3 driven by respective timing signals B and A. It was found from experimental data that a cycle frequency above 3 kHz eliminated thermal time constant issues, and frequency was chosen to be 10 kHz. The switching duty cycle was set at 25% for the compensating element and 75% for the sensing element. Although duty cycles up to nearly 50% will work, a shorter duty cycle reduces undesirable self-heating of the compensating element.
With duty cycles of 25% or less, the compensating element temperature can be kept close to the ambient envelope temperature of the device, minimizing unnecessary power dissipation and case temperature rise. Note that the power dissipation, and therefore the temperature rise of the compensating element is slightly less (about 80%) than 1/(compensator-to-sensor time ratio)2 of the sensing element. For example, if the sensing element is running at a temperature rise of 70° C., and the compensating element is powered 20% of the time, the compensating element will be conducting current ¼ as long as the sensing element, and its temperature rise will be about 0.8×( 1/16)×70° C.=3.5° C.
Temperature gradients on the transducer and interconnect wiring can produce small DC errors in the control and measurement circuits, resulting in pressure measurement errors and instabilities. These thermoelectric effects are illustrated in
This method works similarly to the one described in
V1=Voltage across Rc and Rd+V th-c when current is flowing through compensating element.
V2=Voltage across Rs+V th-s when current is flowing through sensing element.
V3=Voltage across Rs+V th-s when current is flowing through compensating element.
V4=Voltage across Rc and Rd+V th-c when current is flowing through sensing element.
Vth-c is the undesirable thermoelectric voltage that occurs when measuring the voltage on the compensating element, and Vth-s is the undesirable thermoelectric voltage that occurs when measuring the voltage on the sensing element.
Instrumentation amplifiers A2 and A3, which have equal gains, produce an output voltage proportional to V1−V4 and V2−V3, respectively. The effects of Vth-c and Vth-s are both eliminated in the outputs of these two amplifiers. These two amplifier outputs are kept equal using high-gain integrating amplifier A1 and dependent current source I1 in a feedback loop just as in the method described previously. This assures that Rs=Rc+Rd.
The sensing element heating voltage is sensed by measuring the differential voltage V2−V3, also eliminating the effect of Vth-s. Thus, the thermoelectric errors are eliminated in both the control and the measurement functions using this improved method.
Some designs present the problem that a fixed resistor cannot be placed in series with the compensating element in such a way that avoids the consequences of uncontrolled stray resistance in the connection path. This problem was addressed in
In the switched design, the excitation current is passed through a fixed resistor, and the voltage across this fixed resistor is added to the sampled voltage from the connection to the compensating element. This can be done in a number of ways, but the method illustrated in
This new method has the potential of providing higher performance in addition to reduced cost. The previous DC methods are subject to thermoelectric errors that result from small temperature gradients. This method has the advantage of producing higher voltage signal levels, making the thermoelectric errors smaller relative to the signal levels. In addition, there is no signal level loss when the power ratio is increased as there is with the prior methods. Thus, the compensating element can be operated at a much lower power level in proportion to that of the sensing element, reducing undesirable heat dissipation. Since this method operates in a pulsed mode, further performance improvement can be achieved by using the AC measurement technique of
Yet another embodiment is presented in
The time-length of the current pulse to the sensing element Rs, compared to the pulse to the compensating element Rc, is the control parameter that preferentially heats the sensor to a specified resistance. The magnitude of the current pulses would be fixed and would be the same for both Rs and Rc. The time-length of the pulse to Rc would typically be fixed, but could be variable.
In yet another implementation indicated by the broken line from the switch timing control STC to the current source I1, both the level of current through the current source is controlled and the lengths of the pulses to Rs and Rc are controlled.
While this invention has been particularly shown and described with references to preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the scope of the invention encompassed by the appended claims. For example, although the sensing resistance element and compensating resistance element typically are nearly matching, some intentional mismatch may be advantageous as taught in U.S. Published Application No. US-2003-0097876-A1, incorporated by reference in its entirety.
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|Clasificación de EE.UU.||73/719, 73/725, 73/734, 73/746, 73/750|
|Clasificación cooperativa||G01L11/002, G01L21/12|
|Clasificación europea||G01L21/12, G01L11/00D|
|7 Jun 2005||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: HELIX TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION, MASSACHUSETTS
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Effective date: 20050602
|27 Ene 2006||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: BROOKS AUTOMATION, INC., MASSACHUSETTS
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