A New Type of Pressure Sensor for Very Fast Measurements in Fast CTD-Probes

Latest work in the field of marine sensor and parameter research lead to a very powerful new generation of extremely fast sensing temperature and conductivity probes built together in one small compact unit. The performance of state of the art pressure sensors still remains to be improved. A new type of very fast responding pressure sensor was developed with a long term absolute accuracy of much better than and a reasonable resolution of below some cm water column in the range between 0 and 6000 m. The sensing element consists of two separate mercury columns, one pressurized, the other pressure protected. Electrical resistance measurements of high accuracy enable one to fully correct for temperature effects and so determine the absolute pressure. Both mercury columns are mounted in very close thermal contact.