Design and Analysis of a Gas Flowmeter Using Diamagnetic Levitation

This paper presents a gas flowmeter by using the rotation of a diamagnetically levitated magnet rotor to measure the gas flowrate. Two highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) sheets are introduced to build a diamagnetic levitation structure. By adjusting the distance between the two HOPG sheets, the diamagnetic levitation structure can be tuned to obtain a single potential well, which ensures the stable levitation and rotation of the magnet rotor and improves the stability of the sensor. The maximum distance for achieving a single potential well is measured to be 3.1 mm. The feasibility of the proposed flowmeter was verified by experiment. The performance of the sensor was tested, and the maximum relative error is 5.56%.