Thermal MEMS flow meter for gaseous working fluids on the basis of the hot-wire thermoanemometric sensor

This paper describes the main principles of constructing innovative MEMS flow meters for gaseous working fluids. MEMS flow meter contains hot-wire thermoanemometrisc sensor which response to the temperature change caused by convective working fluid heat transfer from a hot-wire. The advantages of using hot-wire thermoanemometric sensors were analyzed. The main emphasis of this work is on speed, construction simplicity and small size of the sensor. The new approach to the solution of a problem of sensor output signal relation with the working fluid temperature is presented. This approach is based on adding an extra temperature sensor and a special scheme for thermal compensation to the hot-wire sensor. The temperature scale between temperature sensors (thermistors) corresponds to the flow speed and the flow rate.