Measurement and Mechanical Engineering Laboratory

Measurement and Mechanical Engineering Laboratory is a required course for junior students in the department of mechanical engineering at National Taiwan University. This course consists of miscellaneous topics of different fields such as material science, solid mechanics, thermal science, control, and fluid mechanics (see Fig. 1). Students can access equipment (or even build one on their own) which measures/demonstrates displacement, velocity, acceleration, force, torque, pressure, temperature, vibration, and other meaningful physical quantities.

Design and Realization of a Long-Stroke Displacement Sensor Using Hall Elements

In this work magnetically sensitive electronic components called Hall elements were used to realize a long-stroke displacement sensor (see Fig. 1). Output voltage of Hall elements are induced by magnetic fields, and hence are sensitive to the proximity of ferromagnetic objects like magnets. By creating flux change in the magnetic circuit (see Fig. 2), induced voltage can be read out and used to calculate the actuated displacement.

Fig. 1 Illustration of a displacement sensor         Fig. 2 Possible magnetic flux change design