On Conditioning of Resistive Strain Gage Channel Connected in Quarter Bridge Configuration in Measurement of Moderately Large Strains

In response to engineering needs of measuring moderate or large strains in metallic structures’ progress in resistance strain gages, technology resulted in widening the measurement range of this type of sensors to a range of 10–15%. For precision strain measurement applications, especially when a considerable number of measurement points are involved, single strain gage sensors are commonly used in quarter Wheatstone bridge configurations. Extension of measurement range to moderate strains requires taking into account inherent nonlinearities in signal transfer functions of the elements present in measurement chain. This work discusses in detail the most important ones, that is resistive gage sensor and quarter bridge measurement configuration nonlinearities to indicate that they are of the same order for moderate strains. Quite straightforward, shunt calibration procedure, taking into account these nonlinearities, is delivered or proposed enabling elimination of systematic errors. Thus, optimum accuracy of strain measurements matching the characteristics of components of strain measurement system can be conveniently achieved upon following simple steps. Inverse hyperbolic tangent— ϵ Ln =tanh −1 (2 ∙ e 0 / E ex )—linking scalar logarithmic strain and bridge reduced output voltage is shown to be a transfer function of strain measurement system with gage sensor in quarter bridge configuration for moderate or large strains.