Simulations of Measurement Errors for a Pendulum Reader

A simulation was created in order to understand better the measurement errors for relative displacement of dams. The simulation was made for a measurement instrument that uses optical measurement with analysis of shadows from multiple sources of light. In addition to the errors from the optical sensor reading, the errors from the LED positioning, LED refraction and optical sensor refraction were simulated. The conclusion was that the magnitude of the errors from each source is too much for an instrument with good accuracy. A simulation was run with a method that compensate the errors and the magnitude of the resulting errors was small enough in this case. The conclusion of the last simulation is that the method for compensating errors works and an instrument with good accuracy can be produced using this method.