Study on the Fabrication and Evaluation of the MEMS Based Curved Beam Air Flowmeter for the Vehicle Applications

Abstract

This paper presents the fabrication and evaluation of the novel drag force type air flowmeter using MEMS technologies for the vehicle applications. To obtain the air drag force, the flowmeter utilized the curved beam structure, which was realized by the difference of residual stress between the silicon oxide layer and the silicon nitride layer. The paddle structure was applied for the maximum air drag force, and the dual-beam was adapted to prevent distortion. The basic experiments were performed in the wind tunnel, and the stable outputs were obtained. The device was applied to the internal combustion engine, and the results were compared with the HI-DS output where the convection thermal flowmeter was used as the reference sensor. The results indicated that the comparable resolutions and response times were obtained under the various engine speeds. Received : Feb. 5, 2016, Accepted : Feb. 24, 2016 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License(http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/bync/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.