Handbook of Force Transducers

This book is dedicated to the force transducers, a wide category of measuring means that can frequently be encountered in a large variety of measurement systems, from the simplest ones to others of great complexity and sophistication.

Generally speaking, any measuring system implies three categories of devices: (a)transducers (or sensors), which are the direct recipients of the information from the object under measurement, (b) intermediate processors, performing various conversions / signal processing / reshaping actions, and (c) output devices, whose role is the transmission of the measurement result(s) in an adequate form to the end user. Among these, the class of transducers is always of a major interest, since they are the only that strongly depend on
the input quantities (measurands).

On the other hand, in a book addressed to transducers the other two classes of elements - intermediate converters and output devices - cannot be omitted or neglected. More generally, it is necessary to start with a structured body of concepts and principles. However, it is not enough to treat them simply as functional blocs of components, they must be analyzed and designed on the basis of their physical
environment and their modeling should be based on their characteristics. Finally, when presenting measurement and instrumentation devices, design concepts and ideas of knowledge engineering and problem solving (i.e. applications) ought to be also added.

The first two above-mentioned parts - principles and components - are the object of this first volume of the "Handbook of ForceTransducers", while the subsequent two parts - characteristics and applications - will be treated in a later volume.