A Novel Ferrofluid Inclinometer Exploiting a Hall Element

This paper presents a novel inclinometer based on the second kind of ferrofluid levitation principle. Two rectangular magnets with the opposite poles are fixed at the ends of a non-magnetic retainer to generate a symmetric non-uniform magnetic field. A Hall element is fixed to the inner wall of the container located at the center of two magnets. When the device inclines, the movement of the ferrofluid surrounding the magnets as an inertial mass will change the magnetic field acting on the Hall element. Meanwhile, the Hall element will detect the change of the magnetic field and transmit the signal. Some static and dynamic characterizations of the inclinometer with different geometric parameters are obtained through the theoretical calculation and experimental measurement. The satisfactory linearity and the high sensitivity indicate the feasibility of the ferrofluid inclinometer.