Mechanical Problems in Measuring Force and Mass

Nowadays electrical force transducers, in which various electrical conversion principles are applied, are widely used. Transducers for forces from 1N till 10 MN are commercially available and used for industrial as well as research purposes. They not only serve to measure forces but also for weighing purposes. Directly converting a force into an electrical signal is not possible. This must be done step by step. For instance, in a strain gauge based transducer the conversion chain is: force - stress - strain - resistance change - bridge output. At every conversion point in this chain parasatic influences can interfere with the results and may cause a loss in accuracy. To surmount the problems related to obtaining sufficient accuracy and reliability for these transducers, much research has been done allover the world in the past 35 years. As a result, new materials, new techniques, improved constructional designs and compensation circuits have been found to overcome the parasitic influences. The object of the IMEKO Conferences on behalf of the Technical Committee on Measurement of Force and Mass (TC-3) is to exchange experiences, to discuss problems and to obtain knowledge about practical applications. In this book the papers have been collected that will be discussed at the 11th International Conference on Measurement of Force and Mass. The topic of this conference is "Mechanical Problems in Measuring Force and Mass".