Turbine tip clearance of aero-engine is important to engine performance. Proper control of rotor tip clearance contributes to engine efficiency improvement and fuel consumption reduction. Therefore, accurate tip clearance measurement is essential. The inductive measurement method is one of the non-contact distance measurement methods, which has the characteristics of high sensitivity, fast response speed and strong anti-interference ability. Based on the principle of inductive sensor measuring tip clearance, the ambient temperature change will cause the material electromagnetic performance change for the conductivity and permeability varies with temperature. The calibration experiment was conducted to obtain the sensor resolution and sensing range. The effect of temperature on sensor parameters was extracted from high temperature experiment data. Results show the resolution of planar coil made of platinum wire can be 10 μm and the maximum sensing range can reach 5 mm. At temperature from 500 ℃ to 1100 ℃, coil inductance almost does not change with temperature while coil resistance varies exponentially with temperature, that means the coil inductance variation can reflect the tip clearance change and resistance can indicate the measuring temperature.

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A high precision eddy current sensor for tip clearance measurement was proposed to assess the dynamic tip clearance measurement for aero-engine rotator. Based on the Lenz’s law, the eddy current sensor has high sensitivity, quick response speed and strong anti-interference capability, in addition, the simple geometry and easy installation are its main merits. The aim is to study the influence of planar coil structure parameters and excitation signal parameters on the sensor coil measurement, provide the basis for design of practical sensor in turbine tip clearance measurement. The dynamic calibration experiment verified the designed planar sensor coil, the results indicated the sensor resolution was 10μm and the measurement range was not less than 3mm. The dynamic experiment proved the measuring range, resolution, response speed of designed sensor can meet the requirement of turbine blade tip clearance measurement. The work provides experience in eddy current sensor design in different application, not only in turbine. And the future work will focus on the high temperature issues.

Turbine tip clearance of aero-engine is important to engine performance. Proper tip clearance can reduce the gas leakage over turbine blade tips and improve the engine efficiency of turbo machinery and reduce the fuel consumption. Therefore, accurate tip clearance measurement is essential. The inductive measurement method is one of the non-contact distance measurement methods, which has the characteristics of high sensitivity, fast response speed, and strong anti-interference ability. Based on the principle of inductive sensor measuring tip clearance, the ambient temperature change may cause the material electromagnetic performance change for the conductivity and permeability varies with temperature. In order to verify the temperature effect on the sensor performance, the repeated calibration experiments were carried out to obtain the sensor repeatability error of 5.4%. Then, the sensor was calibrated in the range of 0mm–4mm clearance at temperature from 600 °C to 1000 °C and obtained the measurement error of 4.6%. Results indicate when the temperature ranged from 600 °C to 1000 °C, clearance measurement error is smaller than the sensor repeatability error so the temperature effect on the sensor characteristics can be ignored. This conclusion makes the sensor promising for monitoring the blade tip clearances at various temperature environment.

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