An exciting development in industrial instrumentation is the WirelessHART radio communication standard,…
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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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While the term “probability” may evoke images of imprecision, probability is in fact an exact…
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Volumes could be written about poor diagnostic technique. The following mistakes are not intended to comprise…
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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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Modern DC and AC motor drives provide features useful when using electric motors as final control elements.…
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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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So far we have just looked at instruments that sense, control, and influence process variables. Transmitters,…
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The vast majority of PID controllers in service today are digital in nature. Microprocessors executing PID…
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Steam boilers are very common in industry, principally because steam power is so useful. Common uses for steam…
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A wise PLC programmer once told me that the first thing any aspiring programmer should learn about the PLC…
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Developed by the Modicon company (the original manufacturer of the Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC) in…
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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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Those familiar with industrial instrumentation will find much within the electric power industry remarkably…
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“Feedforward” is a rather under-used control strategy capable of managing a great many types of…
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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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Light has long been used as a long-range signaling medium. While communication by light through open air is…
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PID control can be a confusing concept to understand. Here, a brief summary of each term within PID (P. I, and…
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Although it seems each model of PLC has its own idiosyncratic standard for programming, there does exist an…
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The advent of “smart” field instruments containing microprocessors has been a great advance for…
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Non-dispersive analysis, while newer in discovery than dispersive analysis (Isaac Newton’s 17th-century…
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The most popular form of signal transmission used in modern industrial instrumentation systems (as of this…
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Several different technologies exist for the conversion of fluid pressure into an electrical signal response.…
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Electrical Resistance Resistance (\(R\)) is the dissipative opposition to an electric current, analogous to…
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A simple control system drawn in block diagram form looks like this: Information from the measuring device…
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Pipe is a hollow structure designed to provide an enclosed pathway for fluids to flow, usually manufactured…
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The concepts of calibration (trimming) and ranging are often difficult for new students of instrumentation to…
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A very common form of on/off valve used for pneumatic and hydraulic systems alike is the solenoid valve. A…
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The key to understanding how three-phase electric motors work is to have an accurate mental picture of the…
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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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Any conductor possesses a characteristic called inductance: the ability to store energy in the form of a…
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Using filter cells to eliminate wavelengths associated with interfering gases is called positive filtering in…
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AC induction motors are based on the principle of a rotating magnetic field produced by a set of stationary…
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Diagnostic ability is arguably the most difficult skill to develop within a student, and also the most…
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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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A pneumatic controller receives a process variable (PV) signal as a variable air pressure, compares that…
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Take for instance the problem of measuring fluid flow through a pipe. To the layperson, this may seem to be a…
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Certain types of nuclear radiation easily penetrates the walls of industrial vessels, but is attenuated by…
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While 50 and 51 (instantaneous and time overcurrent) relay functions monitor line current magnitude and guard…
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In some process applications, it is important that the control valve be able to completely stop fluid flow…
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A great many chemical composition measurements may be made indirectly by means of electricity, if those…
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An extremely important topic in engineering is that of transfer functions. Simply defined, a transfer function…
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A wise PLC programmer once told me that the first thing any aspiring programmer should learn about the PLC…
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Capacitors store energy in electric fields, proportional to the square of voltage. Inductors store energy in…
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Instrument technicians should not have to concern themselves over the programming details internal to digital…
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First, let us review some of the properties of differentials and derivatives, referencing the expression and…
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A limit switch detects the physical motion of an object by direct contact with that object. An example of a…
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In a manually-controlled process, a human operator directly actuates some form of final control element…
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Finally, we arrive at the loop diagram (sometimes called a loop sheet) for the compressor surge control system…
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Lipták, Béla G. et al., Instrument Engineers’ Handbook – Process Measurement and Analysis Volume I,…
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A 4 to 20 mA current signal represents some signal along a 0 to 100 percent scale. Usually, this scale is…
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Multiple accessories exist for pressure-sensing devices to function optimally in challenging process…
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Displacer level instruments exploit Archimedes’ Principle to detect liquid level by continuously…
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Solids tend to expand when heated. The amount that a solid sample will expand with increased temperature…
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Atom: the smallest unit of matter that may be isolated by chemical means. Particle: a part of an atom,…
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Suppose we wished to measure the consumption of propane over time for a large propane storage tank supplying a…
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Filled-bulb systems exploit the principle of fluid expansion to measure temperature. If a fluid is enclosed in…
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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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Disturbances in the liquid tend to complicate liquid level measurement. These disturbances may result from…
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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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