Fig. 1. Q1 type beam screen [7]. (Image used with permission, courtesy of M. Morrone.) sensors and their integration in the self-supporting structure and presents a brief excerpt of the results obtained during the testing campaign. Sensor Design The sensors are based on thin-cantilevered strips. The measurement principle is the determination of the strains induced on the surface of the strip by a displacement normal to the free extremity of the strip itself (Fig. 1). The strain gauges are connected in half Wheatstone bridge, so that temperature and magnetic effects are self-compensated. The plainness of the functioning principle of the sensor Fig. 2. Strain gauge-based displacement sensor functioning principle. December 2021 makes it relatively effortless to tailor the design of it according to the requirements of a particular task. In the application discussed in the following section, the design criteria were a measurement range (displacement of the free extremity of the sensor) of at least 1 mm and a maximum linearity deviation of 1%, while being imperative for the sensor to be insensitive to magnetic fields. A two-dimensional model including the stripe, introduced to ANSYS software in order to optimize the sensitivity and guarantee the mechanical integrity of the sensor under the previously stated specifications, yielded an optimum solution consisting in 46x12x0.5 mm strips, with the material of choice a copper-beryllium alloy because of its favorable mechanical properties. A second part of the study was devoted to analyze the magnetic forces induced in the sensor by the expected magnetic fields during its service life that would induce spurious effects in the measurement despite the strain gauges' magnetic fields self-compensation. IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine 41