One of the fundamental laws of electric circuits is Kirchhoff’s Current Law, which states the algebraic…
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Human-machine interfaces, or HMIs, are a critical part of nearly all control systems, complementing the…
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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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The efficient identification and correction of instrument calibration errors is an important function for…
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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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Perhaps the most valuable skill an instrument technician can possess is the ability to efficiently diagnose…
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When control valves operate between fully open and fully shut, they serve much the same purpose in process…
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A technological advance introduced in the late 1980’s was HART, an acronym standing for Highway…
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Light is known to interact with matter in very specific ways, which may be exploited as a means of measuring…
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Instrument technicians should not have to concern themselves over the programming details internal to digital…
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“Polyphase” means “many phases,” describing a form of AC electrical system where…
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The simple PLC ladder diagram (LD) commands consist of contacts and coils, arranged in sequences that mimic…
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Data-processing modules within FF systems are known as function blocks. Sometimes these blocks serve merely to…
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Phasors are to AC circuit quantities as polarity is to DC circuit quantities: a way to express the…
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Valves can experience a number of problems, most of them either preventable or repairable. These problems can…
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The Law of Continuity for fluids states that the product of mass density (\(\rho\)), cross-sectional pipe area…
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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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The vast majority of PID controllers in service today are digital in nature. Microprocessors executing PID…
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An extremely important topic in engineering is that of transfer functions. Simply defined, a transfer function…
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As we have seen, the concept of differentiation is finding the rate-of-change of one variable compared to…
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Imagine a liquid-level control system for a vessel, where the position of a level-sensing float directly sets…
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The concepts of calibration (trimming) and ranging are often difficult for new students of instrumentation to…
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By definition, a source is a device delivering energy into a system, while a load is a device extracting…
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The final step in treating wastewater before releasing it into the natural environment is to kill any harmful…
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Lipták, Béla G. et al., Instrument Engineers’ Handbook – Process Measurement and Analysis Volume I,…
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When a high-energy photon strikes an atom, it may eject one of the lower-level electrons from its shell,…
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While the term “probability” may evoke images of imprecision, probability is in fact an exact…
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Another category of control strategies involves the use of signal relays or function blocks with the ability…
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Virtually any mass above absolute zero temperature emits electromagnetic radiation (photons, or light) as a…
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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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“Polyphase” means “many phases,” describing a form of AC electrical system where…
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A proximity switch is one detecting the proximity (closeness) of some object. By definition, these switches…
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A different strategy for controlling the flow of fluid is to insert a rotary element into the flow path.…
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A great many precision instruments use the principle of balance to measure some quantity. Perhaps the simplest…
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Cyber-security seems to have its own vocabulary, ranging from unwieldy technical acronyms to slang terms…
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Sample sizes of chemical substances are often measured in moles. One mole of a substance is defined as a…
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(Will be addressed in future versions of this book)
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The final element of PID control is the “D” term, which stands for derivative. This is a calculus…
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Given the ability of pressurized fluids to transmit force over long distances, it is not surprising that many…
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Phasors are to AC circuit quantities as polarity is to DC circuit quantities: a way to express the…
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