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A unique, two-node sense circuit is disclosed. The circuit includes a bridge comprised of resistance elements and a differential amplifier. The two-node circuit is suitably adapted to be arranged in an array comprised of a plurality of discrete bridge-amplifiers which can be selectively energized. The circuit is arranged so as to form a configuration with minimum power utilization and a reduced number of components and interconnections therebetween.
The Turbine Branch concentrates on the following areas: Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), and implementing experimental procedures to obtain physical modeling data. Hot-wire Anemometry is a valuable tool for obtaining physical modeling data. Hot-wire Anemometry is likely to remain the principal research tool for most turbulent air/gas flow studies. The Hot-wire anemometer consists of a fine wire heated by electric current. When placed in a fluid stream, the hot-wire loses heat to the fluid by forced convection. In forced convection, energy transfer is due to molecular motion imposed by an extraneous force moving fluid parcels. When the hot-wire is in "equilibrium", the rate of heat input to the wire is equal to the rate of heat loss at the wire ends. The equality between heat input and heat loss is the basis for King s equation, which relates the electrical parameters of the hot-wire to the flow parameters of the fluid. Hot-wire anemometry is based on convective heat transfer from a heated wire element placed in a fluid flow. Any change in the fluid flow condition that affects the heat transfer from the heated element will be detected virtually instantaneously by a constant-temperature Hot-wire anemometry system. The system implemented for this research is the IFA 300. The system is a fully-integrated, thermal anemometer-based system that measures mean and fluctuating velocity components in air, water, and other fluids. It also measures turbulence and makes localized temperature measurements. A constant-temperature anemometer is a bridge and amplifier circuit that controls a tiny wire at constant temperature. As a fluid flow passes over the heated sensor, the amplifier senses the bridge off-balance and adjusts the voltage to the top of the bridge, keeping the bridge in balance. The voltage on top of the bridge can then be related to the velocity of the flow. The bridge voltage is sensitive to temperature as well as velocity and so the built-in thermocouple circuit can be attached to a thermocouple that can measure the fluid temperature. Additional information is included in the original extended abstract.
The three most commonly used switching circuits are the full bridge converter, the half bridge converter, and the forward converter. All three circuits use the same pulse width concept for regulation with the major difference being how many transistors are used for power handling. The full bridge uses four transistors, the half bridge uses two, and the forward converter uses one. In practical design, forward converters are used at 300 watts and below, half bridges at 300 to 600 watts, and full bridges above 600 watts. Regulation is achieved by alternately saturating diagonal pairs of transistors in the full bridge, alternately saturating transistors in the half bridge, and simply pulse modulating one transistor in the forward converter.
Integrated-circuit conductive test pattern intended to provide data on effects of design widths and design spacings upon actual widths of conductive lines. Provides for electrical measurements both on lines of unknown width and on features having known dimensions. Data from measurements on five bridges used to determine four parameters of mathematical model describing system. In principle, pattern determines effects of width and spacing and interaction between them.
An electrical testing structure and method is described whereby a test structure is fabricated on a large scale integrated circuit wafer along with the circuit components and has a van der Pauw cross resistor in conjunction with a bridge resistor and a split bridge resistor, the latter having two channels each a line width wide, corresponding to the line width of the wafer circuit components, and with the two channels separated by a space equal to the line spacing of the wafer circuit components. The testing structure has associated voltage and current contact pads arranged in a two by four array for conveniently passing currents through the test structure and measuring voltages at appropriate points to calculate the sheet resistance, line width, line spacing, and line pitch of the circuit components on the wafer electrically.
A temperature control system, which includes a modified wheatstone bridge with a resistive-capacitive (RC) circuit in one leg of the bridge, is disclosed. The RC circuit includes a resistor which provides an effective resistance as a function of its absolute resistance and the on-time to off-time ratio of pulses supplied to a switch connected across it. A sawtooth voltage is produced across the RC circuit. The voltage is compared with the voltage across a temperature sensor with heat being applied during each pulse period portion when the sawtooth voltage exceeds the voltage across the temperature sensor.
Program dramatically reduces personnel and time requirements for acceptance tests of hardware. Data-acquisition system reads output from Wheatstone full-bridge strain-gauge circuit and calculates strain by use of shunt calibration technique. Program nearly instantaneously tabulates and plots strain data against load-cell outputs. Modified to acquire strain data for other specimens wherever full-bridge strain-gauge circuits used. Written in HP BASIC.
Circuit providing stable sine wave power up to 10 W supplies small amounts of power at frequency other than 60 Hz. Circuit has Wien bridge oscillator which uses operational amplifier to feed power amplifier stage. Power amplifier stage uses booster amplifier and two discrete transistors for power output.
A hybrid technique is used to study the effects of ground equalization on the electrical performance of CPW shunt stubs. Extensive experiments have been performed and the results are in good agreement with theoretical data. The advantages of using air-bridges in CPW circuits as opposed to bond-wires are also discussed.
A general technique to characterize asymmetric coplanar waveguide (CPW) discontinuities with air bridges where both the fundamental coplanar and slotline modes may be excited together is presented. First, the CPW discontinuity without air bridges is analyzed using the space-domain integral equation (SDIE) approach. Second, the parameters (phase, amplitude, and wavelength) of the coplanar and slotline modes are extracted from an amplitude modulated-like standing wave existing in the CPW feeding lines. Then a 2n x 2n generalized scattering matrix of the n-port discontinuity without air bridges is derived which includes the occurring mode conversion. Finally, this generalized scattering matrix is reduced to an n x n matrix by enforcing suitable conditions at the ports which correspond to the excited slotline mode. For the purpose of illustration, the method is applied to a shielded asymmetric short-end CPW shunt stub, the scattering parameters of which are compared with those of a symmetric one. Experiments are performed on both discontinuities and the results are in good agreement with theoretical data. The advantages of using air bridges in CPW circuits as opposed to bond wires are also discussed.
A practical single constant current loop circuit for the signal conditioning of variable-resistance transducers has been synthesized, analyzed, and demonstrated. The strain gage and the resistance temperature device are examples of variable-resistance sensors. Lead wires connect variable-resistance sensors to remotely located signal-conditioning hardware. The presence of lead wires in the conventional Wheatstone bridge signal-conditioning circuit introduces undesired effects that reduce the quality of the data from the remote sensors. A practical approach is presented for suppressing essentially all lead wire resistance effects while indicating only the change in resistance value. An adaptation of the current loop circuit is presented that simultaneously provides an output signal voltage directly proportional to transducer resistance change and provides temperature information that is unaffected by transducer and lead wire resistance variations.
Widths and spacings of conductor lines on integrated circuits measured electrically by split cross-bridge resistor technique. Speeds evaluation of integrated-circuit fabrication processes. When measurement of probe currents and voltages and reduction of measurement data automated, test structure probed and characterized in less than one second.
A circuit for a hot-wire anemometer for the measurement of fluctuating flow is presented in the present report. The principal elements of the circuit are a Wheatstone bridge, one branch of which is the hot wire; and an electronic amplifier and a current regulator for the brief current which in combination maintain the bridge balance constant. Hence the hot wire is kept at practically constant resistance and temperature, and the time lag caused by thermal inertia of the wire is thereby reduced. Through the addition of a nonlinear amplifying stage the reading of the instrument has been rendered proportional to the velocity. A discussion of certain characteristics of the circuit and the results of related calibrating tests are given.
Trig-Tek, Inc.'s Model 251A ACL-8 Anderson Current Loop (ACL) Conditioner is an eight channel device designed to condition variable-resistant sensor signals from Strain Gage and RTD's (Resistance Temperature Device)s. It uses NASA's patented ACL technology instead of the classic wheatstone bridge. The electronic measurement circuit delivers accuracy far beyond previous methods and prevents errors caused by variation in the wires that connect sensors to data collection equipment. This is the first license to market a NASA Dryden Flight Research Center patent.
The effect of air-bridges on the performance of various coplanar waveguides (CPW) discontinuities is studied. Specifically, the coupled open-end CPW's and the short-end shunt CPW stub discontinuities are considered. The high frequency effect of the air-bridge is evaluated using a hybrid technique. At first, the frequency dependent equivalent circuit of the planar discontinuity without the air-bridge is derived using the Space Domain Integral Equation (SDIE) method. Then, the circuit is modified by incorporating the air-bridge's parasitic inductance and capacitance which are evaluated using a simple quasi-static model. The frequency response of each discontinuity with and without the air-bridge is studied and the scattering parameters are plotted in the frequency range 30-50 GHz for typical CPW dimensions.
The performance of minimal stuck-at fault test sets at detecting bridging faults are evaluated. New functional models of circuit primitives are presented which allow accurate representation of bridging faults under switch-level simulation. The effectiveness of the patterns is evaluated using both voltage and current testing.
Current loop circuitry replaced Wheatstone bridge circuitry to signal-condition strain gage transducers in more than 350 data channels for two different test programs at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. The uncorrected test data from current loop circuitry had a lower noise level than data from comparable Wheatstone bridge circuitry, were linear with respect to gage-resistance change, and were uninfluenced by varying lead-wire resistance. The current loop channels were easier for the technicians to set up, verify, and operate than equivalent Wheatstone bridge channels. Design choices and circuit details are presented in this paper in addition to operational experience.
Existing risk simulations make the assumption that when a free tin whisker has bridged two adjacent exposed electrical conductors, the result is an electrical short circuit. This conservative assumption is made because shorting is a random event that has an unknown probability associated with it. Note however that due to contact resistance electrical shorts may not occur at lower voltage levels. In our first article we developed an empirical probability model for tin whisker shorting. In this paper, we develop a more comprehensive empirical model using a refined experiment with a larger sample size, in which we studied the effect of varying voltage on the breakdown of the contact resistance which leads to a short circuit. From the resulting data we estimated the probability distribution of an electrical short, as a function of voltage. In addition, the unexpected polycrystalline structure seen in the focused ion beam (FIB) cross section in the first experiment was confirmed in this experiment using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The FIB was also used to cross section two card guides to facilitate the measurement of the grain size of each card guide's tin plating to determine its finish.