Assignment 3

Q1. Consider a linear potentiometer that consists of a 0.1 mm copper wire of resistivity 1.8 x 10 -8 Ω-m wrapped around
a core to form a total resistance of 1.5 kΩ. Assume the sliding contact area is a very small.
(I) Estimate the range of displacement that can be measured with this potentiometer for a 20 mm diameter
core.
(II) On a plot show the loading error for a meter resistance of 1, 20, 50, 100 kΩ.

Q.2 The output of a potentiometer is to be read by a record of 10,000- Ω input resistance. Nonlinearity must be held to
1 percent. A family of potentiometers having a thermal rating of 5 W and resistances ranging from 100 to 10,000
Ω in 100-Ω steps are available. Choose from this family, the potentiometer that has the greatest possible sensitivity
and meets the other requirements. What is this sensitivity if the potentiometers are single-turn (3600) units?

Q.3 Consider a Wheatstone bridge circuit having all resistances equal to 120 Ω. If each strain gauge cannot sustain a
power dissipation of more than 0.25 W, what is the maximum value of the input excitation? If this system of strain
gauges (4 nos), is used for measuring strains on a tensile specimen (mounted for maximum sensitivity and
temperature compensation), what is the output voltage per unit of strain. Assume gauge factor = 2.

Q.4 In a Wheatstone bridge, leg 1 is an active strain gage of advance alloy and 120-Ω resistance, leg 4 is similar dummy
gage for temperature compensation, and legs 2 and 3 are fixed 120 Ω resistors. The maximum gage current is to be
0.030 A.
(a) What is the maximum permissible dc bridge excitation voltage? (Use this value in the remaining parts of
this problem.)
(b) If the active gage is on a steel member, what is the bridge-output voltage per 7 MPa of stress?
(c) If temperature compensation were not used, what bridge output would be caused by the active gage’s
increasing temperature by 550 C if the gage were bounded to steel? What stress would be represented by
this voltage? Thermal expansion co-efficient of steel and Advance alloy are 12 x 10-6 and 27 x 10-6 mm/(mm
0
C), respectively. The temperature coefficient of resistance of Advance is 11 x 10-6 Ω/( Ω 0C).
(d) Compute the value of a shunt-calibrating resistor that would give the same bridge output as 70 MPa stress
in a steel member.

Q.5 A strain gage is mounted on a steel cantilever beam of rectangular cross section and connected to a Wheatstone’s
bridge. The resistance of the gage and all other resistance are initially 120 ohms and upon loading, the strain gage
resistance changes by 0.1 Ω. If the gage values having a gauge factor of 2 ±1 % estimate the strain and if the
uncertainty of each resistor is 1%, estimate the uncertainty in the measured s train. Assume the bridge operates in
the null mode.

Q.6 A tensile loaded specimen experiences a uniaxial stress of 100MPa. If two strain gages are mounted, one in the
axial direction and the other in the transverse direction and connected to the adjacent arms of a Wheatstone’s bridge,
determine the bridge constant of the measurement system. If the input voltage is 10 V and the change in the voltage
due to loading is 250 micro volts, estimate the average gage factor of the gages. Assume the specimen to be steel
with E =200 GPa and Poisson’s ratio of 0.3.

Q.7 In a strain measurement system using a galvanometer, there are two resistances R2=R3=120 Ω and R1 is the strain
gage whose resistance under zero strain is 120 Ω. The resistance R4 is adjusted to bring the bridge into balance
when no strain is applied on R1. The gage factor is 2.0. Determine the galvanometer current when the strain induced
is 400 micro strains. Take 5 V as the battery voltage.

Q.8 A seismic instrument is used to measure vibration given by y(t) = 0.1 cos 20t + 0.3 cos 40t. The seismic instrument
is to have a damping ratio of 0.6 and a spring constant of 100 N/m. Select a combination of seismic mass and
damping coefficients to yield less than 10% amplitude error in measuring the input signal and describe the phase
response. Determine the bandwidth in each case.

Q.9 A capacitive displacement sensor consists of two square metal plates of side 5 cm, separated by a gap of 1 mm and
a sheet of dielectric material is placed between the plates in this gap. Dielectric constant for air is 4. Calculate the
capacitance of the sensor when the air gap is x= 0, 2.5 and 5 cm.