Measurements with strain gauges

Taking measurements using strain gauges is a standard procedure in test engineering. Strain gauges determine mechanical stress and derivative quantities such as force, pressure or torque. The strain gauge is a part of many sensors and transducers. Examples include fatigue testing and service life tests of individual components such as metal plates and tubes, or safety-related components such as vehicle axles or airfoils - all the way to structure analysis of large systems like whole vehicles or buildings.

Applications include one or more strain gauges placed in a Wheatstone bridge circuit. Depending on the number of strain gauges used, this is referred to as full, half or quarter bridges. The Wheatstone bridge circuit can be supplied with DC voltage, as well as with alternating voltage (carrier frequency method, CF). Each of the above-mentioned methods offers advantages and disadvantages, and as a rule, imc supports all bridge modes in its measurement amplifiers, and there are both CF amplifiers and DC voltage amplifiers. In addition to measurement amplifiers, especially for strain gauge measurements, there are also flexibly-configurable universal measurement amplifiers. These amplifiers also handle many other types of sensors and measurement modes in addition to strain gauges.

For systematic algoritmic signal analysis - the actual goal of each test measurement - imc provides a large number of software solutions and packages: starting with imc Online FAMOS for real-time data analysis, via imc STUDIO for measurement settings, control and data visualization, to data analysis with imc FAMOS.