Instrumentation & Control

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
  Active and passive instruments

 Null-type and deflection-type

instruments

 Analogue and digital instruments

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
  In active instruments, the external power
source is usually required to produce an
output

 Example: Strain gauges, resistance

temperature detectors (RTDs), and
thermistors, Slide-wire resistor, Differential
transformer

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
  Passive instruments don't require an
external power to produce related output

 Example thermocouples, piezoelectric

accelerometers, bourden gauge,
Photovoltaic cell, Moving coil generator,

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
  An analogue instrument gives an output
that varies continuously as the quantity
being measured changes.

 The output can have an infinite number of

values within the range that the instrument is
designed to measure.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
  A digital instrument has an output
that varies in discrete steps and
so can only have a finite number
of values.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
  Transducers are defined as an
element that converts a change in
some physical variable into a related
change in some other physical
variable.
 It converts signal in one form to
another form

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
  The sensor or the sensing element is the
first element in a measuring system and
takes information about the variable being
measured and transforms it into a more
suitable form to be measured.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
  Example: with a resistance thermometer, the
resistance depends on the temperature value
(sensor). It can be inserted into a bridge circuit
(secondary element) in order to transform the change
in the resistance value to a change in the voltage
output. Finally, the output voltage from the bridge
circuit express about the temperature change value.
In general, we can say that:

Transducer = Sensor + Signal conditioning

circuit

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 The static characteristics of instruments
are related with steady state response,
it means the relationship between the
output and the input when the input
does not change, or the input is
changing with a slow rate.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 The range of a transducer defines the limits
between which the input can vary.
The span is the maximum value of the input
minus the minimum value.

For example, a load cell for the measurement of

forces might have a range of 10 to 50 KN and a
span of 40 KN

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 Error is the difference between the result of the
measurement and the true value of the quantity being
measured.

Error = measured value – true value

Thus, if a measured system gives a temperature reading of

25C when the actual temperature is 24C, then the error is
+1C. If the actual temperature had been 26C then the error
would have been _1˚C. A sensor might give a resistance
change of 10.2KΩ when true change should have been
10.5KΩ. The error is – 0.3 Ω.
Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 Accuracy is the extent to which the value
indicated by a measurement system might
be wrong.
A temperature measuring instrument
might, for example, be specified as having
an accuracy of +2C.This would mean that
the reading given by the instrument can be
expected to lie within + or -2C of the true
value.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 The sensitivity is the relationship indicating how
much output you get per unit input.

The sensitivity of measurement is a measure of

the change in instrument’s output that occurs
when the quantity being measured changes by a
given amount. Thus, sensitivity is the ratio:

= output / input

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 Transducers can give different outputs from the same
value of quantity being measured according to whether
that the value has been reached by a continuously
increasing change or a continuously decreasing change.
This effect is called hysteresis.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 For many transducers a linear relationship between the
input and output is assumed over the working range,
i.e. a graph of output plotted against input is assumed
to give a straight line. The error is defined as the
maximum difference from the straight line.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 The terms repeatability and
reproducibility of a transducer are used
to described its ability to give the same
output for repeated applications of the
same input value. Repeatability is used
for expressing the precision of an
instrument

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 The stability of a system is its ability to
give the same output when used to
measure a constant input over a period of
time.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 The dead band or dead space of a transducer
is the range of input values for which there is
no output.
For example, bearing friction in a flow meter
using a rotor might mean that there is no output
until the input has reached a particular flow rate
threshold.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 The term drift is often used to describe the
change in output that occurs over time. The drift
may be expressed as a percentage of the full
range output. The term zero drift is used for the
changes that occur in output when there is zero
input.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 The resolution is the smallest change in
the input value that will produce an
observable numerical change in the output.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 Dynamic characteristics of an instrument
(transducer) refer to the behaviour between
the input value and the time given by the
transducer to settles down to the steady-
state value.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 This is the time which elapses after a
constant input, a step input, is applied to
the transducer up to the point at which the
transducer gives an output corresponding
to some specified percentage, e.g. 95%, of
the value of the input

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 It is related to the speed of the response
and gives an indication as to how quickly
the system response reaches its final
value. This is the 63.2% response time
(figure 1). Smaller time constant faster
response

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 This is the time taken for the output to rise
to some specified percentage of the
steady-state output. Often the rise time
refers to the time taken for the output to
rise from 10% of the steady-state value to
90 or 95% of the steady-state value.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 This is the time taken for the output to
settle to within some percentage, e.g. 2%,
of the steady state value.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 To illustrate the above, consider the following data which
indicates how an instrument reading changed with time, being
obtained from a thermometer plunged into a liquid at time t =
0. The 95% response time is required.

Time (s) 0 30 60 90 120 150 180

210 240 270 300 330 360
Temp. (°C) 20 28 34 39 43 46 49
51 53 54 55 55 55

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus
 Figure 2 shows the graph of how the temperature indicated by
the thermometer varies with time. The steady-state value is
55°C and so, since 95% of 55 is 52.25C, the 95% response
time is about 228 s.

Prepared By: MUHAMMAD MOEEN SULTAN Department of Mechanical Engineering UET Lahore, KSK Campus