Re: Strain gauge

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

"Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:440362fd.822449656@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Kistler Technologies pretty much wrote the book on industrial type
>> transducers.
>>
>>      http://www.kistler.com/do.content.us.en-us?content=KistlerCountryHome
>>      http://203.147.186.54/html/Kistler/kistler_technologies.htm#contents
>
>Thanks for the cite.  That's a lot of info to digest but from what I gather,
>I'm out of luck.  Piezo sensors detect deltas only up to a certain point,
>and it's measured in hours.
>
>What would you do to try to measure both a house settling and/or a serious
>stress on a support column?  I'm a little worried about the power chair that
>dad's using.  He settled on the biggest one we could find because it had the
>most comfortable chair but with him in it, it weighs close to 400 pounds.
>
>I probably should start looking to seismology because part of their mission
>is to monitor tiny movements of massive components.
>
>Back to the drawing board.

In addition to the resistive devices I cited, there's been a lot of work on
fiber optic load cells but I don't know whether you will find any
inexpensive products that you can buy. Here's a paper dealing with them in
much larger structures.

     http://www.bluerr.com/papers/BRR-1999_SPIE_Vol3587_p40.pdf