force sensor...

[goflo at pacbell.net]

The water brake setups I'm familiar with have a torque arm take-off
designed to push on a hydraulic cylinder - The torque is read off an
appropriately calibrated pressure gauge, and HP is calculated from 
RPM & torque. Many kinds of pressure sensors could be adapted to the
task. Piezo transducers come to mind, but I know of no reasonable
way to acquire small quantities of them - Perhaps someone on the list
does. Failing that my approach would be to use a small hydraulic 
cylinder to pressurize a gas captured in a tube, and measure the gas
pressure with a Motorola MPX5XXX transducer, 0-5 V output, available
in various pressure ranges. Presume you wish to interface this output
with a computer. If you need more specifics post the details of your
dyno & what torque range you are trying to measure - A lot of guys 
on this list are familiar with this stuff.

Regards, Jack

Daniel R. Henriksson wrote:
> I recently acuired a water-brake dynamometer.
> I'm now looking for some force sensing device, to use as a torque-meter,
> it should be a robust temp compensated one, drag or pull doesn't matter.
> It should have a voltage or PWM output.
> Any ideas?
> Finally i can make some serius mapping of my home efi... ;-)