Impact Response Measurements of Force Transducers

The impact response of force transducers was measured. An object encountering negligible friction, because it was levitated with a pneumatic linear bearing, was made to collide with a force transducer under test. The force acting on the object is calculated as the product of mass and acceleration. The acceleration was accurately measured using an optical interferometer. The output signal of the force transducer and the accurately measured force acting on the levitated object were compared. Approximately 91 sets of experiments have been conducted using five force transducers. The maximum values of the impact forces varied between 30-240 N, with the full width at half maximum (FWHM) varying between 6-10 ms. Force transducers of beam type-A1, A2 and S-shaped type-B1, B2, and B3 were tested. The impact response of force transducers of different type and capacity are discussed in this paper.