A study of strain and deformation measurement using the Arduino microcontroller and strain gauges devices

Anderson Langone Silva,Clivaldo Oliveira,José Manoel Balthazar,Arthur Guilherme Mereles,Marcus Varanis

doi:10.1590/1806-9126-rbef-2018-0206

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a methodology for the measurement of strain by means of strain-gauges, where the data acquisition is done by using an Arduino Uno board, due to the low-cost and the easy manipulation of this microcontrollers. The measured signal conditioning is performed by means of a Wheatstone Bridge and then discretized by an Analog-Digital Converter (ADC) external to the Arduino. For the validation of the proposed measurement system, experiments are performed on a cantilever beam and on a cantilever-supported shaft, where the experimental results are compared with those obtained analytically and by simulation using the finite element method. The results obtained are in agreement with the literature and demonstrate that the proposed system has satisfactory accuracy.

Highlights

In many practical situations in engineering, the knowledge of the stresses and strains that are applied in a structure is of vital importance, since the predictability of the materials depend closely on these parameters
There are many experimental procedures aimed at measuring mechanical strain, such as using strain-gauges, which can be optical [8] or mechanical [9]; or using electrical strain gauges, that can be based on resistive [12], capacitive [4], inductive [3] and photoelectric [10]
This paper presents a methodology for stress and strain measurement using strain-gauges and the Arduino microcontroller with the objective of being used on experimental analysis in solid mechanics disciplines

Summary

Introduction

In many practical situations in engineering, the knowledge of the stresses and strains that are applied in a structure is of vital importance, since the predictability of the materials depend closely on these parameters. There are some situations, were the modeling is not possible or its results are rough approximations that do not agree with the real loads acting on the structure. In these cases, in order to avoid overdimensioning, the experimentation is the way around. One of the most common applied method is based on the use of resistive-based strain-gauges. These devices allow the strain to be measured directly by measuring the change in the electrical resistance of them as they are subjected to deformations, which is commonly done by using a Wheatstone bridge. Since the strain-gauges are expensive and not reusable, the overall cost of the experimental procedure is generally high

Methods

Results

Conclusion