A Cross-Type Thermal Wind Sensor With Self-Testing Function

A 2-D smart flow sensor with self-testing function was designed, fabricated and tested in this paper. It is composed of cross-structure heaters and four symmetrically located sensing parts. When the flow angle changes in the clockwise direction, the temperature differences among the four parts, namely Mode 1 given by T₁₃(T₂₄) and Model 2 given by T₁₂(T₁₄) will be Sine(Cosine) functions of wind direction. Further study shows that the magnitude of mode 1 is 1.414 times that of Mode 2, and the phase of Mode 2 leads Mode 1 by 45°. By using the fixed phase gap between the two modes, the self-test function can be realized without additional components. In order to achieve a high sensitivity and robust sensor, thermal insulated substrate was introduced to fabricate calorimetric flow sensor instead of silicon wafers. The proposed sensor was fabricated on the Pyrex7740 substrate using single liftoff process. Finally, a wind tunnel test was carried out in constant power (CP) mode, and the test results show reasonable agreement with the simulation curves.