Mechanical Engineers’ Handbook Third Edition Instrumentation, Systems, Controls, and MEMS Edited by Myer Kutz

Mechanical Engineers’ Handbook

Third Edition

Instrumentation, Systems,

Controls, and MEMS

Edited by

Myer Kutz

The second volume of the third edition of the Mechanical Engineers’ Handbook (‘‘ME3’’) is comprised of two major parts: Part 1, Instrumentation, with eight chapters, and Part 2, Systems, Controls, and MEMS, with 13 chapters. The two parts are linked in the sense that most feedback control systems require measurement transducers. Most of the chapters in this volume originated not only in earlier editions of the Mechanical Engineers’ Handbook but
also in a book called Instrumentation and Control, which was edited by Chester L. Nachtigal and published by Wiley in 1990. Some of these chapters have been either updated or extensively revised. Some have been replaced. Others, which present timeless, fundamental concepts, have been included without change.1 In addition, there are chapters that are entirely new, including Digital Integrated Circuits: A Practical Application (Chapter 8), Neural Networks in Control Systems (Chapter 19), Mechatronics (Chapter 20), and Introduction to Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS): Design and Application (Chapter 21). The instrumentation chapters basically are arranged, as they were in the Nachtigal volume, in the order of the flow of information in real measurement systems. These chapters start with fundamentals of transducer design, present transducers used by mechanical engineers, including strain gages, temperature transducers such as thermocouples and thermistors, and flowmeters, and then discuss issues involved in processing signals from transducers and in acquiring and displaying data. A general chapter on measurement fundamentals, updated from the second edition of Mechanical Engineers’ Handbook (‘‘ME2’’), as well as the chapter on digital integrated circuits have been added to the half-dozen Instrumentation and Control chapters in this first part.
The systems and control chapters in the second part of this volume start with three chapters from ME2, two of which have been updated, and move on to seven chapters from Nachtigal, only two of which required updating. These ten chapters present a general discussion of systems engineering; fundamentals of control system design, analysis, and performance modification; and detailed information about the design of servoactuators, controllers, and general-purpose control devices. This second part of Vol. II concludes with the chapters, all of them new to the handbook, on what are termed ‘‘new departures’’— neural networks, mechatronics, and MEMS. These topics have become increasingly important to mechanical engineers in recent years.

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