Fieldbus devices require far more attention in their initial setup and commissioning than their analog…
Textbook
When I began teaching full-time in 1998, most of what I thought I understood about good teaching was actually…
Textbook
Capacitance Any two electrical conductors separated by an insulating medium possess the characteristic called…
Textbook
Linearity of Measurement Instruments The purpose of calibration is to ensure the input and output of an…
Textbook
There are multiple motives for compromising the security of an industrial control system, some of which…
Textbook
When a high-energy photon strikes an atom, it may eject one of the lower-level electrons from its shell,…
Textbook
Self-balancing mechanisms consisting solely of a baffle/nozzle detector coupled to a feedback bellows, while…
Textbook
Imagine a liquid-level control system for a vessel, where the position of a level-sensing float sets the…
Textbook
One of the marks of a successful problem-solver is a habit of applying general principles to every new problem…
Textbook
Labwork is an essential part of any science-based curriculum. Here, much improvement may be made over the…
Textbook
Learning how to tune PID controllers is a skill born of much practice. Regardless of how thoroughly you may…
Textbook
One of the great benefits of digital technology is the ability to communicate vast amounts of information over…
Textbook
In our first signal characterization example, we tackle the problem of measuring fluid flow through a pipe. To…
Textbook
Control valves are supposed to deliver reliable, repeatable control of process fluid flow rate over a wide…
Textbook
Converting between disparate units of measurement is the bane of many science students. The problem is worse…
Textbook
DC electric current signals may also be used to communicate process measurement information from transmitters…
Textbook
AC induction motors are based on the principle of a rotating magnetic field produced by a set of stationary…
Textbook
Phasors are to AC circuit quantities as polarity is to DC circuit quantities: a way to express the…
Textbook
Perhaps the most basic and necessary protective relay function is overcurrent: commanding a circuit breaker to…
Textbook
An important legacy technology for all kinds of continuous measurement is the self-balancing system. A…
Textbook
Stoichiometry is the accounting of atoms before and after a chemical reaction. It is an expression of the Law…
Textbook
At the next OSI Reference Model layer (layer 4) is a set of protocols specifying how reliable communication…
Textbook
Electrical power grids primarily consist of three-phase AC circuits. This means most power lines (transmission…
Textbook
Some problem-solving techniques are unique to quantitative problems, involving mathematical calculations. In…
Textbook
The concepts of calibration (trimming) and ranging are often difficult for new students of instrumentation to…
Textbook
A chemical reaction resulting in a net release of energy is called exothermic. Conversely, a chemical reaction…
Textbook
Recall that an exothermic chemical reaction is one that releases a net sum of energy, as opposed to an…
Textbook
One very convenient feature of waves is that their properties are universal. Waves of water in the ocean,…
Textbook
A machine in the broad sense of the word is any device designed to translate some form of energy into useful…
Textbook
The efficient identification and correction of instrument calibration errors is an important function for…
Textbook
Much has been written about the benefits of robust PID control. Increased productivity, decreased equipment…
Textbook
The digital multimeter (DMM) is quite possibly the most useful tool in the instrument technician’s…
Textbook
A control strategy similar to ratio control is relation control. This is similar to ratio control in that a…
Textbook
A number of different sensors used in instrumentation generate DC voltage signals proportional to the process…
Textbook
The Law of Mass Conservation states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. The Law of Energy…
Textbook
An electric motor is often used as a discrete control element in a control system if driving a pump, conveyor…
Textbook
So far we have just looked at instruments that sense, control, and influence process variables. Transmitters,…
Textbook
The vast majority of PID controllers in service today are digital in nature. Microprocessors executing PID…
Textbook
All masses require force to accelerate (we can also think of this in terms of the mass generating a reaction…
Textbook
The three “elementary” particles of matter comprising all atoms are electrons, protons, and…
Textbook