초록
An ultrasonic based magnetostrictive position sensor (MPS) provides an indication of real target position. It determines the real target position by multiplying the propagation speed of ultrasonic wave and the time-of-flight between the receiving signals; one is the initial signal by an excitation current and the other is the reflection signal by the ultrasonic wave. The propagation speed of the ultrasonic wave depends on the temperature of the waveguide. Hence, the change of the propagation speed in various environments is a critical factor in terms of the positioning accuracy in the MPS. This means that the influence of the changes in the waveguide temperature needs to be compensated. In this paper, we presents a novel way to improve the positioning accuracy of MPSs using temperature compensation for waveguide. The proposed method used the inherent measurement blind area for the structure of the MPS, which can simultaneously measure the position of the moving target and the temperature of the waveguide without any additional devices. The average positional error was approximately -23.9 mm and -1.9 mm before and after compensation, respectively. It was confirmed that the positioning accuracy was improved by approximately 93%.