Capacitance Automatic Measurement Method of the Thickness of Liquid Film on Plat Form

Abstract

The thickness of water film is an important parameter in the field of chemical industry. Water film is formed by the flowing water, which flows through a narrow channel. So it is difficult to use contact gauges to measure the water film because it’s flowing so fast that if it is touched, the thickness will be changed. A low-cost and high precision non-contact measurement method—capacitive sensor is used as the sensor of the thickness of water film, virtual instrument is used to analyze the measurement state. In contrast to the conventional stand-alone instruments, a PC based virtual instrument for the measurement of water film is proposed in this paper. Based on on-line measurement theory, real time voltages should be collected to PC. These voltages will be computed by formulas in Labview and the real time data of thickness will be plotted on the screen. If bad signal got, it will give error alarm. The method of the measurement of water film can save a lot of fees of research and applications, and be easy to apply in other measurement and control fields. The basic principle and working process of capacitive micrometer, denoise method, the method of capacitive calibration, virtual instrument data acquisition system and on-line measurement of water film, will be further discussed in this paper.