So just what is a mass air flow sensor anyway? This question, probably for most of us, is never asked in our daily lives. However, it does play an important role in several areas. One is in automobiles. One kind of sensor measures the mass of air going into the engine. The information goes to a control unit which determines how much fuel is moved into the engine at once. This is a complex process, and the air sensor can be used along with others to measure the air mass inside the engine more directly.

There are, of course, other sensors that are incorporated into a flow controller. Any pneumatically operated system is going to need an air sensor. Car washes are an example. They wash cars with soap and water, but many of their hoses rely on air to move the machines that wash the cars. Another example are laboratories that study weather. A wind simulator is a machine that forces air out of it by acceleration. Perhaps it doesn’t require something as sophisticated as an ultrasonic flowmeter.  To simulate the windspeed, a sensor still must be applied to work with a computer that calculates the correct correlation of air flow.

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