Improving a Dual-Probe Heat Pulse Based Soil Moisture Sensor Using Insulated Nichrome Wire

Raman, Adhiti and Ananthasuresh, GK (2015) Improving a Dual-Probe Heat Pulse Based Soil Moisture Sensor Using Insulated Nichrome Wire. In: 2nd International Symposium on Physics and Technology of Sensors, MAR 08-10, 2015, Pune, INDIA, pp. 283-288.

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Abstract

The Dual-Probe Heat-Pulse technique has been widely used for in-situ moisture sensing. In the heater probe described in our earlier work the power consumption was 350 mW-the lowest in this category of sensors. In this paper, by employing a material selection method, we further improve the performance of the sensor by employing Parylene-coated nichrome wire and different packaging methods. The power consumption is reduced to 165 mW with a temperature rise between 1 K to 6.2 K degrees in 34% wet and dry red soils, respectively. A variant of the nichrome sensor was one that employed a ceramic tube with four longitudinal holes that eliminated the need for Parylene coating. The sensor was verified in agar agar solution and calibrated with 1200 kg/m(2) red field soil. The compact packaging of the nichrome heater allowed us to provide a heat distribution of 3267 J/m on the probe surface which is two times more than the earlier attempts.

Item Type:	Conference Proceedings
Additional Information:	Copy right for this article belongs to the IEEE, 345 E 47TH ST, NEW YORK, NY 10017 USA
Department/Centre:	Division of Mechanical Sciences > Mechanical Engineering
Date Deposited:	08 Oct 2016 05:38
Last Modified:	08 Oct 2016 05:38
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/54737

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