ERRORS OF ANEROID BAROMETER

Hysteresis - Due to change in pressure, the aneroid cell is placed under stress. As soon as the
stress is removed, they return almost to their original shape. The retardation or failure of the
material to assume completely its original form is known as hysteresis. All aneroid
barometers are subject to the effects of hysteresis although an attempt is made to keep these
effects to a minimum by the proper selection and treatment of materials. Over a long period
of time hysteresis effects gradually tend to disappear.

Temperature - A second and exceedingly important error which affects the aneroid is
temperature changes. Without compensation for changes in temperature the errors of an
aneroid would be quite large. Several methods of temperature compensation are used in the
barometers. Therefore, sometimes temperature correction curves are provided for some
models of Barometer. These corrections, however, are very small, indicating that the greater
part of the error has been compensated.

CORRECTIONS APPLIED TO READING OF ANEROID BAROMETER

In an Aneroid barometer reading, two corrections are applied namely:

 Height correction
 Index correction

HEIGHT CORRECTION: This correction is applied to measure the barometric reading at

sea level. Generally the correction is calculated as one-tenth of the instruments height above
sea level and it is added to the barometer readings.

INDEX CORRECTION: Index error is the error in the instrument, because of the vacuum
chamber's elasticity and the changes over a period of time. Index error is accounted as per its
prefix given i.e. + or –.