Experimental Methods in Measurement and Instrumentation for Electrical and Mechanical Engineers

Book excerpt: The focus of this unique book is to interface electrcial and mechanical engineering students with stand-alone instruments such as power supply, function generator, digital multimeter, oscilloscope, and computer data acquisition system with LabVIEW during laboratory experiments. They will be learning how to use electrical and mechanical devices such as transducers, accelerometers, thermistors, RTDs, and Bourden Gauges as instruments to measure physical quantities with a computer data acquisition system integrated with Labview. Students will be able to apply the theory in practice through the experiments. They will gain hands-on experience on the sophisticated measurement devices and be able to apply statistical analysis on the measured data to increase the accuracy of a measurement system. Experiments lead students to build circuits on breadboards to verify circuit laws, and use measurement sensors, such as pressure transducers and temperature measurement devices, to measure physical variables. The experience of using laboratory instruments and measurement sensors, the understanding of the working mechanism of these devices, and the processing of experimental data using statistical methods, will give students a solid foundation for their electrical and mechanical engineering laboratory courses.