Description
The title of this book, "Measurement Systems: Application and Design," is sufficiently broad that one can read into it a wide range of possibilities with regard to content and approach. The author would like to use the preface to define them more sharply, in addition to presenting the way in which the material has been used and the purpose he feels it can serve in engineering education and practice.
Since measurement in one form or another is used regularly by all sorts of people in all sorts of jobs, one must first restrict the scope. This ma- terial has been used in connection with courses and laboratories in the mechanical engineering curriculum at The Ohio State University and is thus biased toward this audience. Sufficient material at a suitable level is included for two courses: an introductory treatment useful for a re- quired undergraduate course and more advanced considerations suitable for an elective course at the advanced undergraduate or beginning grad- uate level. The inclusion of both types of material in a single text is in part a recognition of the variation in curricula from school to school. By including a wide scope of material it is hoped that the individual instructor will be able to select topics and place emphasis so as to best utilize the previous preparation of his particular students.
The area of measurement is, of course, closely allied to that of laboratory teaching, and since this facet of engineering education is the subject of some controversy, there is certainly room for a wide variety of approaches. One can consider the general field to be composed of two parts: the hard- ware of measurement and the techniques of experimentation. It is difficult to completely separate the two, and some, by choice or because of pressure of time, will design courses to treat both types of material concurrently. At the author's school, three required courses are devoted to this general subject. The first is aimed mainly at developing an understanding of the operating principles of measurement hardware and the problems involved in the analysis, design, and application of such equipment. "Application" here (and in the book title) is not construed to encompass the detailed planning of comprehensive experiments but rather is limited mainly to consideration of the disturbing effect of the measuring instrument on the measured system and the influence of extraneous system variables on the instrument output.
ISBN: 070851859
