- By WFsensors
Stability in non-corrosive gas environments isn’t accidental — it’s the result of multiple physical effects and material behaviours combining over time. I cover definition, causes, electronics compensation, mechanical design and system strategies in turn, offering quantifiable evaluation methods and actionable engineering advice to help you make informed choices when designing or selecting sensors.
Catalog
1. Concept and Quantification of Drift
Definition and measurement of long-term drift
Long-term drift means the slow change in a sensor’s output when the measured pressure itself is steady. Engineers usually quantify it as a percentage of full scale per year or as an absolute offset — for example ±0.25%FS/year. It may sound small, but over months or years it accumulates and can degrade system performance. Short-term noise affects instant precision, while long-term drift becomes a running bias.
To evaluate drift properly, measure over time and across temperatures, record trends and relate drift to vibration and installation conditions. Digital pressure sensors often export continuous data, which makes long-term trend analysis practical. That trend data is crucial for lifetime management and for choosing maintenance intervals.
2. Physical Mechanisms Behind Drift
Role of thermal cycling, mechanical stress and material ageing
Even in “clean” gases, sensors age and their performance shifts. Repeated heating and cooling creates differential expansion between chip and package, shifting internal stresses and nudging the baseline. Mechanical loads, vibration and mounting stress can slowly deform diaphragms or support structures. Adhesives and elastomers age — they relax, outgas or shrink — changing seals or alignment. Tiny amounts of moisture or oils in filtered air can also settle near sensing elements; at low pressures, even a little contamination matters. These physical paths explain why drift shows up even when the gas itself is benign.
Understanding these mechanisms helps you design for robustness and gives physical priors you can use in algorithmic compensation.
3. Electronic and Algorithmic Countermeasures
Digital filtering and real-time zero-point correction
A powerful way to fight drift is to bake electronics and smart algorithms into the sensor. Modern digital pressure sensors include high-precision ADCs and on-chip DSP, enabling multi-stage filtering that removes sampling artefacts and lowers noise floor. The real benefit comes from baseline tracking and zero-point drift correction: by applying long-term smoothing, baseline models and anomaly detection, the firmware can detect slow offsets and compensate in real time. That means far fewer field recalibrations.
Pairing temperature compensation tables or custom calibration coefficients with in-chip correction lets the sensor output already-corrected readings, reducing the system’s calibration burden and lowering total ownership cost.
4. How Structure and Manufacturing Affect Stability
Packaging, material choice and factory calibration essentials
At the hardware level, solid mechanical design and tight manufacturing control are foundational. Match substrate thermal expansion coefficients, minimise residual internal stress in packaging, and hold tight tolerances on diaphragm geometry and supports — these steps cut long-term baseline shifts. Factory calibration should span the full temperature range and multiple pressure points, recording each device’s response curve and writing custom compensation coefficients into memory. That gives best-in-class initial stability.
For some packages, consider protecting the pressure port and adding filters to reduce the effect of micro contaminants on the sensing element.
5. System-level Strategies and Maintenance
Sampling strategy, field verification and calibration frequency
Long-term stability depends as much on how the sensor is used as on the sensor itself. Use sensible sampling rates, filter parameters and baseline self-checks to avoid capturing artefacts and to detect drift early. For critical systems, implement long-term trend monitoring and set alarm thresholds so maintenance is triggered before performance is compromised. Devices with auto-zero or on-board zero adjustment cut down field re-calibration needs, saving time and money. Keeping a log of sensor history helps refine calibration schedules and feed product improvements.
Why Stability Matters in Real Applications
Applications like VAV HVAC control, clean-room monitoring, medical respiratory devices and filter monitoring are extremely sensitive to drift. A reliably stable digital sensor in non-corrosive gas environments reduces false alarms, avoids unnecessary maintenance and makes system behaviour predictable over years. When choosing or designing sensors, favour parts with robust mechanical design, full factory calibration and built-in zero-point correction.
Conclusion
Even with clean, non-corrosive gases, pressure sensor drift is real and can be costly if left unmanaged. Combining solid mechanical and thermal design, rigorous factory calibration and on-chip digital filtering plus zero-point correction greatly reduces long-term error, lowers the need for field recalibration and extends reliable system operation. Make long-term stability an explicit design criterion — from part selection through to system integration — rather than a footnote on the spec sheet.
The above introduction only scratches the surface of the applications of pressure sensor technology. We will continue to explore the different types of sensor elements used in various products, how they work, and their advantages and disadvantages. If you’d like more detail on what’s discussed here, you can check out the related content later in this guide. If you are pressed for time, you can also click here to download the details of this guides air pressure sensor product PDF data.
For more information on other sensor technologies, please visit our sensors page.