I am working at the readout of the piezoelectric accelerometer B&K 4516 which needs a current source between 2 mA to 20 mA. Do we have any reference design with components that delivers constant current to the piezoelectric accelerometer ?
Due to the wide current range, a stable voltage source with series resistor will already work for the purpose, at least for a first test, You'll probably end up with a simple transistor current source.
A question is whether the current "can vary 2-20mA
as it pleases, no prob" or "can be anywhere in that
range, but then must stay put". The former, call it a
resistor.
Pick any current between 20 and 20 mA and make it a precision low-noise high impedance constant current source over the entire vibration spectrum for the CCLD active accelerometer with a built-in charge amp that translates the output into mV/g.
I found LM317 adjustable which can be used to deliver 12.5 mA current with R1 100 Ohm. Additionally I have drawn how to connect the accelerometer and oscilloscope for probing. Kindly have a look and let me know if any thing missing. Thanks in advance.
This will work however the bandwidth or fall slew rate is unknown for the acceleration to be measured. The LM317 is a Darlington source drive with no sink drive.
We have slow acceleration which we need to measure. I am not sure about the values but what is the bandwidth of measurement if we use LM 317 current source solution. ?
Have a look at the circuit diagram again I provided in the last post. If due to acceleration the voltage across the accelerometer is change, how about the current ? would it be constant through LM 317 current source in to the accelerometer ?
According to LTspice model, LM317 has 1 MOhm output impedance below 1 kHz, falling factor 10/decade at higher frequency. Should work well for your application.
Basically that´s the idea of a constant current source ....
Mind:
For the current source to work properly it needs sufficent high input voltage.
If I´m not mistaken then the accelerometer has a bias voltage output of about 10V.
If so, then its a good idea to choose the total supply voltage to be a bit higher than 2 x 10V = 20V.