One of the great benefits of digital technology is the ability to communicate vast amounts of information over…
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Light has long been used as a long-range signaling medium. While communication by light through open air is…
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pH is the measurement of the hydrogen ion activity in a liquid solution. It is one of the most common forms of…
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Developed by the Modicon company (the original manufacturer of the Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC) in…
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It is possible to convey electrical power and communicate analog information over the same two wires using 4…
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Some of the simplest types of digital communication networks found in industry are defined by the EIA…
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RTDs are completely passive sensing elements, requiring the application of an externally-sourced electric…
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I remember first learning about the world-wide Internet, and wondering what it actually looked like. The first…
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Some self-powered (4-wire) analog electronic transmitters are designed to behave as electrical loads rather…
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Layer 1 of the OSI Reference Model is where we define the “physical” elements of a digital data…
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DC electric current signals may also be used to communicate process measurement information from transmitters…
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Programmable logic controllers are essentially nothing more than special-purpose, industrial computers. As…
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Labwork is an essential part of any science-based curriculum. Here, much improvement may be made over the…
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The vast majority of PID controllers in service today are digital in nature. Microprocessors executing PID…
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An engineer named Bob Metcalfe conceived the idea of Ethernet in 1973, while working for the Xerox research…
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Learning PLC programming is a very important skill. If your job involves programming, then you will likely…
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A design-based fortification is one rooted in technical details of system architecture and functionality. Some…
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There is much to be said for neatness of assembly in electrical signal wiring. Even though the electrons…
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All substances are comprised of various elements in various combinations and proportions. Elements may thus be…
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The following animation shows how a radio-energy pulse travels down and then up the waveguide of a guided-wave…
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The reason why a pneumatic control valve’s stem position corresponds linearly to the amount of air…
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Perhaps the simplest form of solid or liquid level measurement is with a float: a device that rides on the…
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While 50 and 51 (instantaneous and time overcurrent) relay functions monitor line current magnitude and guard…
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Valve actuators provide force to move control valve trim. For precise positioning of a control valve, there…
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Much of our knowledge about atomic structure comes from experimental data relating the interaction between…
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In order to provide an interface between the internal (digital) world of a computer and the external (analog)…
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Every flow-measuring instrument exploits a physical principle to measure the flow rate of fluid stream.…
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The digital multimeter (DMM) is quite possibly the most useful tool in the instrument technician’s…
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Once while working as an instrument technician in an aluminum foundry, a mechanic asked me what it was that I…
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A temperature switch is one detecting the temperature of some substance. Temperature switches often use…
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An electromechanical relay is an electrical switch actuated by an electromagnet coil. As switching devices,…
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(Will be addressed in future versions of this book)
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Perhaps the most important rule of controller tuning is to know the process before attempting to adjust the…
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A design-based fortification is one rooted in technical details of system architecture and functionality. Some…
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Most people reading this book have likely had the experience of adjusting water temperature using two hand…
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An important legacy technology for all kinds of continuous measurement is the self-balancing system. A…
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The disadvantages of pneumatic instruments are painfully evident to anyone familiar with both pneumatic and…
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Classical mechanics (often called Newtonian mechanics in honor of Isaac Newton) deal with forces and motions…
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Displacer level instruments exploit Archimedes’ Principle to detect liquid level by continuously…
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It is often useful to express the amplitude of an alternating quantity such as voltage or current in terms…
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Sometimes we encounter a diversity of instrument signal standards in one control system. Such is the case with…
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Circuit breakers used in residential, commercial, and light industrial service are self-tripping devices: they…
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A variety of problem-solving techniques have been presented for students over the years which are all helpful…
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In order for any PID controller to be practical, it must be able to do more than just implement the PID…
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As we have seen, the concept of integration is finding the accumulation of one variable multiplied by another…
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Multiple accessories exist for pressure-sensing devices to function optimally in challenging process…
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This animation shows the basic operation of a gas chromatograph, showing the separation of different molecular…
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In the United States, the most common language used to program PLCs is Ladder Diagram (LD), also known as…
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Imagine a major marathon race, where hundreds of runners gather in one place to compete. When the starting gun…
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An important design parameter of a control valve is the position it will “fail” to if it loses…
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RTDs are completely passive sensing elements, requiring the application of an externally-sourced electric…
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In this section I will show screenshots from a process loop simulation program illustrating the effectiveness…
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A unique form of differential pressure-based flow measurement deserves its own section in this flow…
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Process analyzers measure the concentration of specific substances for the purpose of measuring and/or…
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To summarize some of the key points and concepts for teaching: Do not waste class time transmitting facts to…
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Learning how to tune PID controllers is a skill born of much practice. Regardless of how thoroughly you may…
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Some analyzers measure the composition of a process stream by directly immersing the sensing element in that…
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A form of protection against faults on long-distance power lines is called distance relaying, so named because…
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