Cryogenic Non-contact Displacement Sensors

Capacitec cryogenic temperature non-contact displacement sensing technology has been in use in Aerospace applications to assist satellite and other spacecraft engineers in the performance of experiments on instruments in laboratory environments that replicate space conditions.

Cryogenic non-contact displacement sensors with Capacitec's unique combination of a very small sensor diameter, large range in hard vacuum environments wins the choice of engineers when testing components within motors, valves and drives. This testing is done on components at -456°F (-272°C) to verify performance predictions on ground simulations in their labs prior to their launch into space.

Some more specific examples of Space related applications are displacement measurement on 2 axes in a closed loop control system and displacement measurements to correct satellite positioning. Both of these applications are tested at extremely low temperatures at 10 -8 Torr.

In another application a miniature Capacitec displacement sensor was successfully used in an environment of 4 Kelvin and 18 Tesla to achieve direct measurement of strain as a part of a customer's magneto-thermo-mechanical characterization effort on a new magnetic shape memory alloy family.

Examples of customers using Capacitec cryogenic displacement sensor systems are large Aerospace testing labs such as NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR), Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON), LIDAX and Observatoire de Paris.