The Main Sensor Types and What Each One Measures
Selecting sensors requires matching physical transduction principles to measurands while accounting for thermal drift, noise floor, and fab availability.
Flexure Creep
Elastic Delay
Time dependent deformation of a spring element under a constant mechanical load causes a slow drift in the sensor output over time. This phenomenon of flexure creep occurs in load cells when the internal metal structure undergoes microscopic strain adjustment under continuous pressure.
Stress Duration
Sensor deviation magnitude depends on both the level of applied force and the length of time the load remains on the sensor. In heavy weighing applications, the load must be held for hours or days, which allows the strain to accumulate gradually and creates a transient zero shift.
Output Recovery
Once the load is removed, the sensor does not immediately return to its original zero point. The material undergoes a reverse deformation process that gradually restores the baseline reading, a process that can take hours to complete depending on the alloy composition of the spring element.
Strain Error
Compensation techniques are used by sensor manufacturers to minimize the impact of this behavior on accuracy. By applying thin film strain gauges with counteracting creep properties, the negative thermal and mechanical shifts are balanced out during assembly. The effectiveness of this compensation is measured at reference conditions before the sensor is certified for industrial force measurement, with calibrated weights applied for a standard interval to verify output stability.