Electrical Measurements & Instrumentation

Course Code: EEE 374

Lecture 05
Course Instructor: Dr. Hammad Omer (Assistant Professor)
(PhD, MS, MCS, PGD (IT) B.Eng.)
Commonwealth Scholar (Imperial College London, United Kingdom)
Group Lead: Medical Image Processing Research Group
(www.miprg.com)
Department of Electrical Engineering
COMSATS University, Islamabad
Dated: 25 & 26/09/2024
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Galvanometer
• A Galvanometer is essentially a PMMC instrument designed to
be sensitive to extremely low current levels
• The simplest galvanometer is a very sensitive instrument with
the type of center zero scale
• The deflection system is arranged so that the pointer can be
deflected to either right or left of zero, depending on the
direction of current through the moving coil
• The scale may be calibrated in microamperes, or milliamperes
• For milliamperes scale, the instrument current sensitivity
(uA/mm) is used to determine the current level that produces a
measured deflection
• Deflecting torque is proportional to the number of coil turns, the
coil dimensions, and the current flowing through the coil
• The most sensitive moving coil galvanometers use taut-band
suspension, and the controlling torque is generated by the
twist in the suspension ribbon
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Galvanometer

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Galvanometer
• Eddy current damping may be provided as in other PMMC
instruments, by winding the coil on a nonmagnetic conducting
coil former
• A nonconducting coil former may be used, and the damping
currents are generated solely by the moving coil
• In this case, the coil is shunted by a damping resistor which
controls the level of eddy currents generated by the coil
movements
• A critical damping resistance is stated, which gives just
sufficient damping to allow the pointer to settle down quickly
with only a very small short-lived oscillation
• With the moving coil weight reduced to the lowest possible
minimum for greatest sensitivity, the weight of the pointer can
create a problem
• A small mirror can be mounted on the moving coil instead of a
pointer, the mirror reflects a beam of light on to a scale
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Galvanometer
• The light beam behaves as a very long weightless pointer
which can be substantially deflected by a very small coil
current
• This makes light-beam galvanometers sensitive to much lower
current levels than pointer instruments
• Galvanometer Voltage sensitivity is often expressed for a given
value of critical damping resistance, usually stated in
microvolts per millimeter
• A megaohm sensitivity is sometimes specified for
galvanometers, and this is the value of resistance that must be
connected in series with the instrument to restrict the deflection
to one scale division when a potential difference of 1V is
applied across its terminals
• Pointer galvanometers have current sensitivities ranging from
0.1 to 1 uA/mm. For light-beam instruments typical sensitivities
are 0.01 to 0.1 uA per scale division
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Galvanometer

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Galvanometer
• Galvanometers are often employed to detect zero current or
voltage in a circuit rather than to measure the actual level of
current or voltage
• In such case, the instrument is referred to as a null meter or
null detector
• A galvanometer used as a null meter must be protected from
the excessive current flow that might occur when the voltage
across the instrument terminals is not close to zero
• Protection is provided by an adjustable resistance connected
in shunt with the instrument
• When the shunt resistance is zero, all of the current flows
through the shunt
• As the shunt resistance is increased above zero, an increasing
amount of current flows through the galvanometer.
• Galvanometer applications have been largely taken over by
electronic instruments that can measure extremely low levels
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of voltage and current
DC Ammeter
• An ammeter is always connected in series with a circuit in
which current is to be measured.
• The ammeter must have a resistance much lower than the
circuit resistance
• The PMMC instrument is an ammeter basically
• The pointer deflection is directly proportional to the current
flowing in the coil
• However, the maximum pointer deflection is produced by a
very small current
• The coil is usually wound of thin wire that would be quickly
destroyed by large currents
• For large currents, the instrument must be modified so that
most of the current to be measured is shunted around the coil
of the meter, only a small portion of the current passes through
the moving coil

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DC Ammeter

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DC Ammeter
• A shunt, or very low resistance is connected in parallel with the
instrument coil
• In the figure shown, Rm is the meter resistance (or coil circuit
resistance) and Rs is the resistance of the shunt
• Suppose that the meter resistance is exactly 99 Ohms and the
shunt resistance is 1 Ohm. The shunt current (Is) will be 99
times the meter current (Im)
• Therefore, if the meter gives FSD for a coil current of 0.1mA,
the scale should be calibrated to read 100x0.1mA at full scale

• Example:

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DC Ammeter

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DC Ammeter

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DC Ammeter

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Ammeter Scale
• The total ammeter current in the previous example is 10 mA
when the moving coil instrument indicates FSD, therefore the
meter scale can be calibrated for FSD to indicate 10mA
• When the pointer indicates 0.5 FSD and 0.25 FSD, the current
levels are 5mA and 2.5mA, respectively
• Therefore the ammeter scale may be calibrated to linearly
represent all current levels from zero to 10mA

• Shunt Resistance:
• If a shunt having a smaller resistance is used , the shunt
current and the total meter current will be larger than the levels
calculated
• In fact, shunt resistance values can be determined to convert a
PMMC instruments into an ammeter for measuring virtually
any desired level of current
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DC Ammeter

Example:

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DC Ammeter

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Swamping Resistance
• The moving coil in a PMMC instrument is wound with thin
copper wire, and its resistance can change when its
temperature changes
• The heating effect of the coil current may be enough to
produce a resistance change
• Any such change in coil resistance will introduce an error in
ammeter current measurements
• To minimize the effect of coil resistance variation, a swamping
resistance made of manganin or constantan is connected in
series with the coil
• Manganin and constantan have resistance temperature
coefficients very close to zero
• If the swamping resistance is nine times the coil resistance, a
1% change in coil resistance would result in a total(swamping
+ coil) resistance change of 0.1%

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Swamping Resistance

• The ammeter shunt must also be made of manganin or

constantan to avoid shunt resistance variations with
temperature
• The swamping resistance must be considered part of the
meter resistance Rm when calculating shunt resistance values

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Quiz # 1 Dated: 26th September 2024

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Practice Questions

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3.7 (Answer)
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