Modification of the Maxwell–Wien Bridge for Accurate Measurement of a Process Variable by an Inductive Transducer

Abstract

The small inductance of an inductive transducer generally linearly changes with a process variable, but their measurement by the usual inductive bridge circuit like the Maxwell bridge, the Maxwell-Wien Bridge, the Hay bridge, etc., suffers from errors due to the effect of the stray capacitance between bridge nodal points and the ground and the stray inductance on the inductive coil, respectively. The conventional Wagner-Earth technique is not suitable for continuous measurement. In this paper, a modified operational-amplifier-based Maxwell-Wien bridge measurement technique has been proposed in which the effect of stray capacitance and inductance is minimized. In the first phase of the experiment, the bridge performance has been studied with a known variable inductor, and in the second phase, the same experimentation was done by replacing the variable inductor with an inductive coil having an adjustable core position for the measurement of displacement. The linear characteristics over a wide range of displacement with good repeatability, linearity, and variable sensitivity have been described.