Determining Magnitudes of Forces at Known Locations through a Strain Gauge Force Transducer

A novel strain gauge force transducer was developed to minimize the number of strain gauges needed to determine the magnitudes of loads when the locations are known. This innovative methodology requires only one strain gauge for each force magnitude desired, reducing the complexity and cost associated with traditional approaches. The theory was verified with laboratory experiments. Seven uniaxial strain gauges were attached to the underside of a simply supported, slender, aluminum beam. One or more loads were applied either directly atop strain gauges or in known positions between strain gauges. Experiments were conducted on several different single and double-load configurations to evaluate the extent of the new methodology which yielded average errors under 5% for the cases where loads were direct atop strain gauges and 6.6% for the cases where the loads were between strain gauges. These findings indicate the potential of this novel strain gauge force transducer to revolutionize load measurement in scenarios where load locations are predetermined.