I was one of the principal designers for the Lockheed Skunk Works flight test instrumentation group back in the late '70s through my retirement in 2008. Back around 1980, we were working toward the ...

Compared to traditional structural materials, polymer matrix composites (PMC) offer greatly enhanced performance and flexibility. However, these benefits come at the cost of increased material ...

When designing an experiment or test, simplicity is important. Each process added to a test or experiment to obtain data increases the potential for error. For ...

Many conventional strain gages are similar in appearance to Figure 1. A serpentine pattern etched into a metal foil creates a relatively high resistance in a small space. The foil is bonded to a thin ...

“Gauging the strain,” February’s Special Report on Data Acquisition, presented traditional strain gage theory and highlighted several instruments and bridge amplifiers suitable for use with strain ...

The most common device for the measurement of load, pressure, torque, and even piezo-resistive (low frequency) acceleration is the strain gauge transducer. As a transducer, which converts a measured ...

This article appeared in Electronic Design and has been published here with permission. Strain—the response of a material to an applied stress due to an applied force or weight—is an important ...