Bad fuel gauges?

The reason for the weight sensor was because he did not want to
penetrate the fuel tank to add his sensors. Once inside the fuel tank,
I do not see the benefit of an optical sensor vs a float sensor. In
fact, I don't quite understand why float sensors are so inaccurate in
the first place. It is just a variable resistor. The shape of the fuel
tank can be easily calibrated out. Averaging the sloshing is equally
easy to do. Anyone know what makes them so notoriously inaccurate?



On Feb 24, 3:50 pm, "RST Engineering" wrote:
I wonder if a pressure sensor placed inside the bottom of the tank could be
made sensitive enough to "weigh" a column of fuel inside the tank above the
sensor. That would only work for regular sized tanks (no triangles) but
could be integrated over a long enough time to take care of any slosh.

Just a random thought, mindya...and I haven't run the numbers.

Another thought is a string of LEDs separated from photosensors with, say,
10 or 15 of them inside the tank mounted vertically.

Hmmm...any other thoughts for liquid level measurements? Sonar a la
Polaroid?

Jim

An accurate fuel gauge is long overdue in aviation. It doesn't have to
be fancy gadgetry, fuel flow integrators or capacitive sensors. One of
the experimental guys had installed a simple pressure sensor under the
fuel tank which measured the total weight of the fuel tank. While not
perfect, it was far better than anything else I have seen, including
sight gauges.