A Ferrofluidic Inclinometer in the Resonant Configuration

In this paper, an innovative inclinometer exploiting ferrofluids is presented. The device consists of a glass pipe filled with deionized water and a drop of ferrofluid, a coil generating a retaining force on the ferrofluidic drop, a couple of sensing coils detecting the ferrofluidic mass position, and two exciter coils moving the ferrofluidic drop back and forth inside the water at the resonance frequency of the whole system. The device exhibits an intrinsic robustness against inertial shocks. The resonant operation mode represents the main novelty with respect to previous realizations of the ferrofluidic inclinometer presented by the authors. This strategy allows for improving the performances of the inclinometer also in terms of mechanical sensitivity. This paper will focus on the design and experimental characterization of the resonant inclinometer, showing improvements achieved by the resonant configuration with respect to the previous “static implementation” without the exciter coils.