Saturday, April 23, 2016

04/07 - Lab 15: Temperature Measurement System Design

Lab 15: Temperature Measurement System Design

A cascaded op amp set up is a head-to-tail arrangement of two or more op amps in a single circuit. The output voltage from the first op amp becomes the input voltage for the second, etc. In this lab, we designed a temperature measurement system which implements a wheatstone bridge, pictured below:


A thermistor was used as R + delta R, since it its a resistor that changes with change in temperature. A poteniometer was used to match the initial resistance of the thermistor, which balanced out the bridge, causing V_ab = 0. As the thermistor gained heat, there becomes a difference in resistance, and thus a potential difference between a and b. This voltage will be directed into an op amp, which was used to tone down the sensitivity of the wheatstone bridge.

We began by drawing a diagram of our proposed design and figuring out what the gain needed to be in order to have our temperature measuring system range between 0 and >2 V:


In order to achieve the appropriate voltage range, we determined that the desired gain should be 4. This means that the lowest output voltage should be 0, and the highest output voltage should be ~2.3V. The actual circuit is pictured below:

Wheatstone Bridge

Full Circuit with balanced wheatstone bridge

Output voltage achieved was 2.64 V, near the expected 2.3 V

In Class Examples


1. Practice: Find io as a function for vs.





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