The advent of “smart” field instruments containing microprocessors has been a great advance for…
Textbook
The dispersion of visible light into its constituent colors goes all the way back to the 17th century with…
Textbook
Data-processing modules within FF systems are known as function blocks. Sometimes these blocks serve merely to…
Textbook
A whole class of problem-solving techniques focuses on altering the given problem into a simpler form that is…
Textbook
The final element of PID control is the “D” term, which stands for derivative. This is a calculus…
Textbook
As described earlier in this chapter, calibration refers to the adjustment of an instrument so its output…
Textbook
Any physical location in an industrial facility harboring the potential of explosion due to the presence of…
Textbook
Suppose we wished to measure the rate of propane gas flow through a hose to a torch: Flowmeters appropriate…
Textbook
RTDs are completely passive sensing elements, requiring the application of an externally-sourced electric…
Textbook
Light has long been used as a long-range signaling medium. While communication by light through open air is…
Textbook
In a manually-controlled process, a human operator directly actuates some form of final control element…
Textbook
Volumes could be written about poor diagnostic technique. The following mistakes are not intended to comprise…
Textbook
Take for instance the problem of measuring fluid flow through a pipe. To the layperson, this may seem to be a…
Textbook
Phasors are to AC circuit quantities as polarity is to DC circuit quantities: a way to express the…
Textbook
When a high-energy photon strikes an atom, it may eject one of the lower-level electrons from its shell,…
Textbook
Although it seems each model of PLC has its own idiosyncratic standard for programming, there does exist an…
Textbook
As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, instrumentation safety may be broadly divided into two…
Textbook
Capacitors store energy in electric fields, proportional to the square of voltage. Inductors store energy in…
Textbook
I remember first learning about the world-wide Internet, and wondering what it actually looked like. The first…
Textbook
Classical mechanics (often called Newtonian mechanics in honor of Isaac Newton) deal with forces and motions…
Textbook