Course Details

1. Describe the instrumentation principles, elements in real measurement systems and measurement statistics (standard deviation, curves of regression, accuracy, error analysis).
2. Explain the operation and use of basic sensors for measurement of displacement, temperature, force, pressure, flow,motion signal conditioning, signal amplification, filtering, noise, grounding and differential signals
3. Use effectively basic mechanical and electrical instrumentation, as well as computerised instrumentation for data acquisition, file input/output manipulation and data analysis.
4. Analyse the performance of a variety of measuring instruments in terms of accuracy, precision, resolution, hysteresis, reproducibility and sensitivity and perform calibration techniques on these instruments.
5. Execute experiments with practices of signal acquisition using sensors and/or transducers and the associated signal processing techniques.
6. Design, through laboratory sessions, virtual instruments for data acquisition, processing, measurement, analysis and presentation, using graphical programming languages such as LABVIEW.

Instrumentation principles:  Describe the structure of a general measuring system and understand the role of each component part. Describe how a measuring system is calibrated and define  characteristics of instruments such as: resolution and readability. Calculate the sensitivity, percentage error, possible error and probableerror for a measuring system

Sensors and transducers:  Understand the operation principles of sensors and transducers. Describe various types of displacement, position and proximity sensors. Solve problems regarding strain gauges, potentiometers and differential transformers. Describe how resistance temperature sensors and thermocouples work. Solve problems with RTD and thermistors.

Signal conditioning: Understand the role of signal conditioning as part of a measuring system and define signal amplification ,filtering, noise, grounding and differential signals.Describe the operation principles of mechanical and electronic amplifiers.Calculate the gain (amplification) for various types of amplifiers.

Computer based data acquisition systems: Understand the operation of computerized data acquisition systems for measuring, analysis and data presentation.Describe the operation of analog to digital converters and define resolution, linearity, conversion time, quantazation error, sampling, aliasing and Nyquist rate.

Data acquisition hardware: Describe computer card characteristics: bus standards, maximum sampling rate, resolution, single ended and differential inputs, hardware timers/pacers, interrupts and DMA.

Lab Work: Use effectively all editing techniques of LabVIEW in both, front panel and block diagram environment.Create simple virtual instruments. Develop a virtual instrument which simulates signal generation and processing. Create a subVI which converts temperature units: ⁰C to ⁰F.Design an icon-connector and use it in a VI. Perform data acquisition using LabVIEW. Understand how to use loops for counting. Analyze logging data.Ceate a VI which calculates the minimum, maximum, and average temperatures during acquisition process and displays all  measurements in real time on a waveform graph. Perform error checking in VIs using error clusters and handle errors appropriately. Create a VI using state machine architecture that simulates a simple test sequence. Use strain gauges as arms of a Wheatstone bridge for measuring displacement. Perform measurements with linear and rotary potentiometers. Understand the operation of a 4-bit  optical encoder.Calculate the rotational speed of a shaft using either the Gray scale or the Binary Scale Encoder.

• Kevin James, “PC Interfacing and Data Acquisition”, Newnes, 2000.
• B. Mihura, “LabVIEW for Data Acquisition”, Prentice-Hall, 2001.

• John Park, Steve Mackay, “Practical Data Acquisition for Instrumentation and Control Systems”, 2003
• Anthony J. Wheeler, Ahmad R. Ganji, "Introduction to Engineering Experimentation", 2/E, Prentice Hall, 2003.
• M. Tooley, “PC-Based Instrumentation and Control”, Newnes, 1998.
• J. Turner and M. Hill, “Instrumentation for Engineers and Scientists”, Oxford Science Publications, 1999.
• J. A. Haslam, G. R. Summers, D. Williams, “Engineering Instrumentation and Control”, Arnold, 1997
• Barry E. Paton, “Sensors, Transducers and LabVIEW: An Application Approach To Virtual Instrumentation”, 1/e, Prentice Hall, 1999.

Most part of course is delivered to the students by means of lectures and tutorials conducted with the help of power point presentations and hand notes. Lecture notes and presentations are available through the web (extranet) for students to use in combination with the textbooks. Laboratory experiments: Carried out in small groups.