1827. A New High Accuracy Instrument for Measuring Moment of Inertia and Center of Gravity
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Paper
Abstract
This paper describes a new class of mass properties measuring instruments which exhibit performance that is 10 to 100 times better than any measuring machine of conventional design. This extraordinary magnitude of improvement is the result of high speed closed-loop moment sensing. The basic concept is similar to the old re-balance CG instruments which contained a counterbalance weight and a motor drive to reposition this weight so that a moment balance was achieved. However, unlike the old ‘soft’ technology which was very slow and unstable, the new technology achieves balance in less than one second and, because of the high loop gain, is also very stiff and stable. Unlike most technology improvements, there is no tradeoff. The new concept improves all of the performance criteria: sensitivity, dynamic range, linearity, stiffness, and overload protection. This sounds too good to be true, but extensive tests on a number of instruments of different sizes have failed to show up any disadvantage to the new method.
