Force summing devices

Types of Force Summing Devices:

1. Dead-weight Piston Gauge

2. Ring Balance Gauge
3. Bell type of Pressur Gauge
 Thick Wall Bell Gauge
 Thin Wall Bell Gauge

Dead-weight Piston Gauge

Dead-weight Piston Gauge is used for measurement of higher steady pressures, and also for checking
elastic diaphragm gauge or Bourden tube type Gauge. In this type of instrument, the force produced on
a piston of known area is measured directly by weight it will support.

CONSTRUCTION AND WORKING

It consists of a very accuretly machined, bored and finished piston which is inserted into a close
fitting cylinder. The cross-sectional areas of both the piston and the cylinder are known. At the top of
the piston is provided a platform on which the standard weight, of known accuracy, can be placed. An oil
reservoir can be sucked by a displacement pump on its upward stroke, although it is rearely used.

For callibration purposes, first a known (calculated standard) weight is placed on the platform and
the fluid pressure is applied on the other end of the piston untill enough force is developed to lift the
piston-weight combination and the piston floats freely within the cylinder between the preset limits.
When the test pressure is increased until it just supports tthe weights and piston, it is known very
accuractly (P = W/A). The only source of error in a dead-weight piston gauge is the friction between the
piston and the cylinder and it is less than 0.1%. Various pressure ranges can be achieved by varying the
area of the piston and the size of the weight. Range is 20 KPa to 300 KPa.
Ring Balance Gauge

Ring Balance Gauge is frequently used for measuremnet of low and very high differential pressures of
the order of few inches of water gauge. To obtain very high pressure the piston is stepped and a second
gland is added. This has the effect that the area over which the weight is distributed is the difference
between the cross-sectional areas of the two sections of the piston and thus the pressure generated by
even quite small weight can be very high indeed:

P=W/ (A1 – A2)

CONSTRUCTION AND WORKING

It consists of a hollow ring of circular section, partioned at its upper part and partially filled with a liquid
in order to form two pressure measuring chambers with pressures P 1 and P2 isolated from each other.
The body of the ring is supported at its centre by a knife edge resting on a bearing surface or ball
bearings. The ring may be of metals such as aluminium alloy, or of plastic material. The material
depends upon the nature of gas whose pressure is being measured. The nature of the gas also
determines the nature of the filling medium. The force which operates the instrument is due to the
diffeernce between the pressures on the two sides of the partition. The cross sectional area of the ring is
therefore made large when differential pressure is higher.