Viscosity Electronic Measurement Estimation System based on the Impedance Frequency response of a Vibrating Wire Sensor

Nowadays, viscosity measurements play an important role in several areas, such as Industrial, Scientific and Technological, and have utility in various applications. In the Industrial area, viscosity measurements can be applied in several areas, such as the food, pharmaceutical, automobile, chemical and petroleum industries. Viscosity measurement brings benefits since monitoring it allows cost reduction as well as increased product quality and client satisfaction. This work aimed to develop a system capable of performing sensor’s impedance measurements, characterization of that impedance for a particular range of frequency values and resonance frequency and half-height width estimations. Viscosity measurements are possible by using a vibrating wire Sensor. The system developed is based on a DSP as the central processing unit and a signal generator whose reference clock frequency is defined by the DSP. This characteristic allows a synchronism between signal generation and signal acquisition, made by two ADCs, whose reference clock frequency is also be given by the DSP. This new approach, regarding the synchronism between signal generation and acquisition, allows a reduction of the digital processing required to determine viscosity, making its process quicker. It was also implemented USB interface in order to allow the connection to a personal computer Index terms – Viscosity, Vibrating Wire Sensor, DSP, Digital Processing, Synchronism