Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Whittington, Wil

Committee Member

El Kadiri, Haitham

Committee Member

Rhee, Hongjoo

Date of Degree

5-13-2022

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Mechanical Engineering

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

James Worth Bagley College of Engineering

Department

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Abstract

Dynamic testing provides valuable insight into the behavior of materials undergoing fast deformation. During Split-Hopkinson Pressure Bar testing, stress waves are measured using strain gauges as voltage variations that are usually very small. Therefore, an amplifier is required to amplify the data and analyze it. One of the few available amplifiers designed for this purpose is provided by Vishay Micro-Measurements which limits the user’s options when it comes to research or industry. Among the challenges of implementing the Hopkinson technology in the industry are the size and cost of the amplifier. In this work, we propose a novel design of a signal conditioning amplifier that provides the following functionalities: voltage excitation for strain gauges, wide gain range (1-1000), signal balancing, shunting, and filtering. The main objective is to make a smaller and cheaper amplifier that provides equivalent or better performance allowing larger application of the Hopkinson technology in the industry.

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