The need to accurately measure load, strain and force, or a combination of these, is an essential requirement for a significant number of industrial, environmental and social applications. Whether it is weighing ingredients in a food blending process, measuring weight on a crane hook, or measuring strain and force on the ocean floor, Water Weights provides reliable and cost effective solutions.
First of all, Let's define the instruments at the heart of the topic.
What is a load cell? A load cell is a precision machined billet of a specific material (picked during the design process), with strain gauges bonded at defined points accurately measuring the deflection in the billet when a force or load is applied.
There exists many types of load cells exhibiting different measurement characteristics and performance in respect to accuracy and repeatability. Typical designs include: compression column, shear beam, double shear beam, shear web, tension, tension & compression, single point, load pin, etc...
The mounting and loading of all load cells is critical to its performance.Type selection is typically a product of application and performance requirements.
What is a strain gauge? A strain gauge is a resistive network device which is powered by a DC voltage, generally termed “Excitation Voltage”, where the resistance changes if its dimensions are altered by the material it is bonded to. Typical excitation levels are 10, 15 and 20 volts DC with outputs from the strain gauges in milli-volts, where a milli-volt is equal to one thousandth of one volt.
How does a load cell work? When a force or load is applied to the machined billet it changes its shape. This shape change causes deflection in strain gauges bonded on to the billet changing the resistance of the strain gauge, which in turn changes the milli-volt output from the strain gauges.
Provided the load cell billet is not subjected to a force or load that exceed its designed operating capacity, the billet and the strain gauges will return to their original form/shape when the force or load is removed. This characteristic enables the load cell to operate within a predefined accuracy and repeatability tolerance without fatigue.
The applications are numerous incorporating standard and custom designs interfacing exactly with specific equipment and processes in industry.
Some of our applications include:
• Content weighing of vessels, tanks, bins, silos, reactors and presses
• Tension measurement in tethers, anchor and mooring lines, risers and umbilicals
• Mass measurement of slabs, billets torpedo cars, ladles and tundishes
• Strain measurement in structures, solid risers, strip & wire, and textiles
For more information visit our load measuring systems page at http://www.waterweightsinc.com/en/load-measurement.html
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