The Application of Coreless Inductors for Displacement Measurements in Laboratory Investigations of Rock Properties
Abstract The paper presented the coreless inductive sensor, its construction and principle of operation. The impact of temperature on the outcome of a measurement performed with the inductor was discusses, together with the possibility of temperature compensation of the inductor’s performance. Subsequently, the reasons for limited measurement accuracy and resolution were discussed, particularly under the variable pressure in the order of some hundreds MPa. Two types of such sensor were presented: a sensor for measuring linear strains, e.g. during compressibility measurements, and an sensor for measuring circumferential strains during triaxial compression tests. Additionally, the manners of fixing the sensor on rock samples were presented. Finally, some examples of the sensor application were shown, together with the results of measurements of deformations of rock samples - especially in cases when resistance gauges cannot be used, and the samples are subjected to a load in the uniaxial and triaxial system, under the hydrostatic pressure of up to 400 MPa and the normal one.