Design of a Hall Probe Pressure Transmitter using Bellows as Sensor

R. Sarkar, Animesh Ghosh, Lipika Ghosh and N. Mandal

Asansol Engineering College
Vivekananda Sarani, Kanyapur, Asansol-713305

E-mail: rajan_maa@rediffmail.com, ghoshanimesh.ghosh63@gmail.com,

nirupama_cal@rediffmail.com
Abstract: Bellows, an elastic type pressure sensor is
generally used as a local indicator. To transmit the
signal of bellows to a remote distance some
technique is needed. In the present paper a Hall
probe sensor has been used to convert the bellows
movement into voltage signal which can be
converted into 4 20 mA current signal and
transmitted to a remote indicator. It has been
observed that the transducer and transmitter
outputs against pressure have a very good linearity
and repeatability. The necessary theoretical
equations along with experimental results are
reported in the paper.
Keywords: pressure measurement, bellows, Pressure
transmitter, Magnet, Hall Probe.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Pressure is an important measuring and

controlling technical parameter during industrial
production process. In order to operate industrial
production well, pressure should be accurately
measured and controlled. Pressure can be
measured in terms of absolute or gauge. The
absolute pressure can be measured in terms of
height of a liquid column in a manometer
whereas the gauge pressure is measured by
different types of sensors [1-4]. As for example
bourdon tube, diaphragm, capsule, bellow
element etc. operate as primary sensing elements
for measuring positive or negative gauge
pressure. The sensors like strain gauge,
piezoresistance, LVDT, capacitive element,
inductive element etc. act as secondary sensors
to measure positive or negative gauge pressure.
The negative gauge pressure or vacuum pressure
can also be measured by many other sensors like
pirani gauge, ionization gauge, McLeod gauge
etc. In industrial application it is required to
transmit the measured pressure to a remote
distance. Hence in a pressure transmitter, the
change of sensor parameter due to the change of
fluid pressure is converted into an electric or
pneumatic signal by using a suitable transducer
and that signal after amplification is transmitted
to a remote receiver. Thus the pressure
transducer is a vital part of any pressure
transmitter and its performance determines the
reliability of operation of the transmitter. Many
works on development of reliable pressure
transducer are still being reported by different

groups of workers. B. Raveendran et al. [5] have

designed and developed a MEMS based wireless
modular pressure transmitter. A Bourdon tube
based pressure transmitter unit using an
improved inductance bridge network has been
studied by S.C.Bera et al. [6]. Y. Ruan et al. [7]
have developed a multipoint wireless pressure
transmitting system composed of pressure sensor
PTB203, A/D converter ADC0804, MCU
STC89C52, wireless communication module
CC1101, receiver module STC89C52, CC1101
and display module LCD1602. Zeng Mingru et
al. [8] have developed a HART Protocol based
intelligent pressure transmitter which is
compatible with both analog and digital signals.
K.Subramanian et al. [9] have developed MEMS
type capacitive pressure sensor with sensitivity
of the order of few fF/ kPa. Universal frequency
to digital converter (UDFC) technique has been
used by S.Y.Yurish [10] to develop an intelligent
digital pressure transducer. A multiplexed
frequency transmitter technique has been used by
R.Vrba et al. [11] to design a reliable pressure
transducer using ceramic diaphragm.
II.PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION
In the present paper, a hall probe based
pressure measurement technique has been
developed. In this technique a permanent magnet
is placed on the tip of the bellows with the Hall
probe sensor on the top of the outside fitting of
bellows chamber as shown in Fig.1. The
movement of the bellows tip is measured by a
hall probe sensor. With the change of pressure
the distance between magnet and the hall sensor
decreases and so the magnetic intensity at the
sensor increases. The Hall sensor senses this
increase of magnetic field intensity and
accordingly its output voltage increases with the
increase of pressure. This signal is nonlinearly
related with the movement of float. But for very
small movement of the bellows this voltage will
be almost linear. The experimental results are
reported in the paper. The block diagram of the
proposed transducer is shown in Fig.1.
Necessary mathematical equations have been
derived to explain the theory of operation of the
transducer as well as transmitter. A prototype
unit along with the signal conditioner has been
designed and fabricated. The experiments have
been performed to find out the static

characteristics of the sensor, transducer and

transmitter. The experimental results are reported
in the paper. A very good linearity and
repeatability of results with adjustable sensitivity
of the transducer has been observed.

where K 2 is the constant depending on the pole

strength of the magnet, its radius and
permeability of air which are all constants. Since
x a equation (3) is reduced to

Bx
Bx

K2
x2

(4)

K2

H h

(5)

The above equation is equally true for very low

pressure also.
Since at low pressure H h , so equation (5) is
reduced to

Bx
Fig. 1: Diagram of the proposed transducer along
with float and hall probe sensor
II. METHOD OF APPROACH
In the present paper the pressure is sensed by a
bellows. A magnet is placed on the top of the
bellows. And the hall probe on the bellows
chamber. The float movement of the bellows is
converted into voltage by a hall probe sensor.
Output
voltage
is
amplified
by
an
instrumentation amplifier INA101 and then
converted into 4-20 mA current signal using
signal conditioning circuit. This signal is then
transmitted to remote station with negligible loss.
Let the pressure is P and the corresponding
height of the bellows tip from reference is h . In
bellows the height of the tip is proportional to
pressure and is written as
P K1h
(1)

Bx

K2 X
x2 a2

3/ 2

(3)

2h
1 H

(6)

Vh of the hall

sensor is proportional to Bx if the current

passing through the sensor be kept constant and
hence it is given by

Vh K 3 Bx

(7)

where K 3 is the constant of proportionality.

Hence from equations (5) & (7)

Vh

K 2 K3

H h

(8)

K4
2h
1
H
H
K

K
K
where 4
2 3 is another constant.
Vh

or,

(9)

Therefore from equations (1), (8) and (9), the

output from hall probe is given by

Vh

K 2 K3

H P / K1

K4
2 KP
1

H
H
Vh a bP
Vh

(2)

where H is the total length of the hall probe

from reference. In the present work the magnet is
selected to be a circular permanent magnet. Let
the radius and width of the magnet be a and t
respectively. Hence magnetic field at the hall
probe due to magnet is

Now the output hall voltage

where K1 is the constant

Now the distance of the hall probe from the
magnet is

x H h

K2
H

(10)
(11)
(12)

Therefore output is linearly related with

pressure.
III.

DESIGN

In the present design a cylindrical permanent

magnet is selected of inner radius 0.011m ,
depth 0.008 m , width 0.011m . In our present

design, H 0.25 m . The output of hall sensor

is amplified by INA101 based instrumentation
amplifier. The gain of the instrumentation
amplifier is set by external resistor R1. This
output signal is first converted into amplified
voltage signal (V0) in the range 1-5 volt D.C.
and then into current signal ( I 0 ) in the range 420mA D.C. by a signal conditioner circuit as
shown in Fig.2. After calibration the output of
the transmitter becomes 4mA when V0 is 1 volt
and pressure P is zero psig and 20mA when V0
is 5 volt and pressure P is at maximum range
( P max ) of the bellows. Hence the transmitter
voltage output (V0) in volt and current output

( I 0 ) in mA may be written as,

4
P 1
P
max

and

V0

(13)

I 0 cV0

(14)

From (13) and (14),

I 0 K 4 K5 P
where

(15)

4c

Pmax

K 4 c and K 5

(16)

Fig.2. Block diagram of the proposed pressure

transmitter using bellows element as sensing
device

Fig. 3: Circuit diagram of hall probe based

pressure indicator
IV.

EXPERIMENT

The experiment is performed in two steps. In the

first step, the proposed transducer was designed,
fabricated and mounted on the outside cover of
bellows chamber as shown in Fig. 1. The bellows
with the above sensor was first fitted with a dead
weight tester and the dead weight of the dead
weight tester was increased in steps and in each
step the Hall voltage output is measured and the
characteristics of the hall sensor based transducer
unit is determined. The characteristic graph
obtained by plotting Hall voltage against
Pressure is shown in Fig. 4. Experiment was
repeated both in increasing and
decreasing modes for several times
and the standard deviation curve for
six observations is shown in Fig.6. In the
second step the output of the pressure transmitter
is taken in terms of current signal and he
characteristic is shown in Fig.7.

Fig. 4: Characteristic graph obtained by plotting

Hall voltage against Pressure

Fig. 5: Percentage deviation Curve of the Hall

Probe based Pressure Transducer

Fig. 6: Standard Deviation Curve of the Hall

Probe based Pressure Transducer

Fig.7: Characteristic graph of hall probe based

pressure transmitter
V. DISCUSSION
The characteristic of hall probe sensor is
nonlinear in nature. But change of hall probe
voltage is quite linear as shown in Fig.4. The
linear nature of the curve is due to the fact that
the movement of the tip of the bellows for the
entire pressure range is generally very small and
hall probe voltage due to small change of
distance between hall probe and magnet lies
almost in the linear zone. The percentage
deviation curves from linearity as shown in Fig 5
also indicate that the percentage deviation from
linearity also lies within the tolerable limit. A
very good repeatability of the experimental data
was also observed as shown by the standard
deviation curves in Figs. 6. The characteristic of
the whole transmitter is almost linear as shown
in Fig 7. The design of the system is very simple
and the hall probe & the permanent magnet are
now available at a very low cost. Hence the cost
of the pressure transmitter will be low.

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