Paper VT-TuA8
NIST Experience with New Non-Rotating Force Balanced Piston Gauges for Low Pressure Metrology

Tuesday, October 21, 2008, 4:00 pm, Room 205

The NIST Low Pressure Manometry Project maintains and operates primary standard ultrasonic interferometer manometers (UIMs) over the pressure range 0.01 Pa (vacuum) to 360 kPa (3.6 times atmospheric pressure). The typical gauging technologies used to cover this important pressure range have included high-accuracy capacitance diaphragm gauges (CDG), resonance silicon gauges (RSG), piezoresistive transducers (PZT), and piston gauges (PG). Over the past 6 years, a new type of customer gauge, the non-rotating force-balanced piston gauge or FPG, has been compared to the NIST 140 Pa UIM and 160 kPa mercury UIMs. The results of these customer comparisons will be presented along with the advantages and disadvantages of using this new high-accuracy device to both generate and measure pressures between 1 Pa and 15 kPa.